


like a vague, loving shadow

by jedikhaleesi



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: M/M, Pining, Pre-Relationship, Red String of Fate, Soulmates, Spies & Secret Agents, Superpowers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-02
Updated: 2017-11-22
Packaged: 2018-11-22 15:17:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 28,062
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11382852
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jedikhaleesi/pseuds/jedikhaleesi
Summary: The one with superpowers, a Civil-War-based (as in Avengers) plot, figure skating, and a healthy dash of soulmate angst.





	1. four reales of wax and six quarts of oil

**Author's Note:**

> "Come, light two two-real candles, one to San Roque and the other to San Rafael, patron saint of travelers. And light the lamp of Our Lady of Peace and Good Voyage, since there are bandits abroad. Better four reales of wax and six quarts of oil now than a fat ransom later.”
> 
> In this chapter: the Rostelecom Cup, the Grand Prix Final, and the South Korean national championships. Seung-Gil makes friends, goes to dinner several times, and meets his soulmate.

The red threads were distracting. Seung-Gil couldn’t pay attention when people talked to him because of them. Even now, as his coach reminded him of his duty to Pyeongchang, he only had eyes for the clot of red strings extending from the audience and into the ceiling of the stadium. He remembered the brightness of the thread connecting Katsuki Yuuri and Viktor Nikiforov’s fingers and the way they looked at each other. He didn’t bother to look down at his own hand, knowing from experience the dull, faded red that he would see.

The red threads connected soulmates. The brighter the red, the closer the soulmates were to each other physically. Judging by the color of his thread, Seung-Gil’s soulmate probably lived in Antarctica. At best, his unique ability to see the red strings of fate was an inconvenience; at worst, it was a reminder of his loneliness.

No matter. A gold medal would be a better companion than another person. People were too unpredictable to deal with. As the familiar strains of Almavivo began, he lost himself in the music and the calculation of his technical score. There was fierce competition at the Rostelecom Cup, and to get to the podium he’d have to skate as cleanly as possible in both the short and the free.

He was doing pretty well until he fell on the triple axel, at which point he noticed that the string tied to his finger wasn’t the usual colorless gray. It was a deep red, which indicated that his soulmate was in the same building, but not within 100 meters. It rattled him just enough that he stopped calculating the probable component score he would receive as he moved into the step sequence. His soulmate was here? In the stadium, not halfway across the world as they usually were? God, if they were one of Yuri Plisetsky’s Angels Seung-Gil was better off alone forever. 

He finished his routine with a flourish and immediately glanced down at his pinky finger. It was still dark red. So it hadn’t been a delusion. He wasn’t sure what to do with this information. If his soulmate was a fan, he wouldn’t have the time to pick out them out from among the thousands in the stands. If his soulmate was a skater, he would have found them already, as all the skaters were encouraged (read: coerced) into staying at the same hotel. But this was the closest he had been to his soulmate in his entire life, and if he let this opportunity go, he might never have it again. 

His score was announced. It was a personal best, much higher than he had expected at 91 points, and he allowed himself to start thinking about his soulmate again, even as he was herded to an interview. When he was finally let go, he headed back out to the stands to watch group 2 perform. Yuri Katsuki evidently was flirting with his coach, if the distance between their faces was anything to go by. If he stayed by the barrier much longer he would probably receive a time deduction. Even from where Seung-Gil was sitting, he could see the bright red thread connecting Katsuki and Nikiforov. Their connection was that strong. He hoped he could have something like that one day.

“So do you like watching Katsuki?”

He whipped around to face the speaker, a young man who was probably around his own age with dark hair shaved in an undercut and piercing blue eyes. He was smirking. Seung-Gil was immediately drawn to the bright red thread around his finger, and traced the path to-

Wait. He traced the string again.

The stranger’s thread was tied to his own.

“Is that a no?”

“Katsuki is an excellent skater,” he managed to get out. Enough people already thought he was strange. There was no need for him to alienate his own soulmate. “I enjoy watching him skate.”

“His short program is interesting to watch. Everyone seems to be going for sex appeal this season,” the man hummed thoughtfully. “Say, did you know he’s powered?”

“Powered?” Seung-Gil repeated unintelligently. “Katsuki Yuuri?”

It was very common to have powers. It was well known that both Viktor Nikiforov and Yuri Plisetsky had ice magic, a definite advantage when you were a figure skater. Seung-Gil’s, obviously, was seeing everyone’s red string of fate. But as far as he knew, Katsuki didn’t have a power. It certainly wasn’t mentioned in his ISU profile.

“Yup!” The man even popped the ‘p’. “I’m here to get him to register with the PPD.” He cheerfully whipped out an official ID from the Powered Persons Association, shoving it in Seung-Gil’s face. Seung-Gil took the opportunity to look for the man’s name. It was Jean-Jacques Leroy, and he was only nineteen. Underneath his name were listed his powers: superhuman strength, agility, endurance, reflexes, durability, and healing. A veritable Captain America, except that his ID said he was from Canada.  “How do you think I could talk to him?”

The PPD, or the Powered Persons Database, was run by the PPA that registered powered persons. Registration was optional, but recently the PPA had pushed campaigns to encourage people to register. Apparently the campaigns were getting more proactive now. Seung-Gil wasn’t registered in the database. It was too much of a bother to wait in line at a government office. That was time that could be used for practice instead. He also didn’t need the stigma that came with being powered. Nikiforov and Plisetsky were the darlings of their country. Russia didn’t care about their powers, as long as they kept coming home with gold medals. But Seung-Gil had tread into the depths of the internet, and he had read speculation about how they were destroying the sport with their powers and how they were cheating. While his power was totally unrelated, he didn’t want that kind of attention. He’d rather keep getting the questions about his quad loop instead of the ones the Russians had to face about the legality of their ice magic.

“Katsuki doesn’t like confrontation,” he said. “You should have emailed him instead of trying to get into his personal space at a competition.”

“But I came all the way from Canada!” Jean-Jacques moaned dramatically, throwing an arm over his face. Seung-Gil watched the red thread move with his hand. That explained why his thread was always gray. South Korea and Canada were over eight thousand kilometers apart, after all. “This was specially entrusted to me!”

“You may have success if you catch him before he enters his hotel,” he offered.

“Thanks.” Jean-Jacques winked, and Seung-Gil flushed. “So, got any special powers you want to tell me about, Ice Prince?”

“N-no.” He cursed himself. That stutter would definitely give him away. PPA agents were infamous for being government assets, and with his powers, Leroy had probably gone on several missions already despite his age.

Jean-Jacques’ smirk turned a little steely. “You sure about that?”

“Yes, I’m sure,” he said, more confidently this time. “It’s none of your business, anyways.”

“As a PPA agent, I’m required to ask all likely persons to register with the PPD. It’s a precaution that many of your fellow skaters have followed, like Nikiforov and Plisetsky. They’re both here at this competition, aren’t they?” In the background, Yuri Katsuki’s music finished, and the crowd went wild around them. Seung-Gil realized that he had been facing away from the ice the whole time.

“A precaution for what?” he asked instead of answering.

“Just in case.” Jean-Jacques shrugged, putting on a brilliant smile. “It’s a simple and common process. You won’t get any mail from us.”

“I never said I had powers,” he snapped.

“You didn’t need to.”

“I don’t have powers.” He got up from his seat. Where was Coach Park? Who cared about watching Plisetsky’s performance when he could get away from this PPA agent? Why did he have a PPA agent for a soulmate? He should have just settled for watching the rest of the routines from the green room. In his peripheral vision, he saw the stop sign red of the thread connecting him and Jean-Jacques, and he shoved his hand into his pocket in an attempt to cover it.

“What are you afraid of? The PPA doesn’t do anything with the information we collect.”

_ But you could _ , Seung-Gil didn’t say, and he walked as quickly away from the stands as possible.

* * *

 

 His hotel room was on the eighth floor, and when Seung-Gil looked out from the balcony he could see Moscow covered in red strings. He watched a plane pass by with a good hundred red threads streaming from its windows. His own fell straight down to the ground, and if he squinted he could make out two figures talking under a streetlight. So Jean-Jacques had caught Katsuki Yuuri and was probably even now convincing him to register with the PPD. He wondered what Katsuki’s power was. Most likely something mundane. They usually were. In rare cases they were entirely useless, like Seung-Gil’s. Who wanted to know other people’s soulmates? Who cared? 

Leroy. There was something about that name that was familiar. Seung-Gil pulled out his phone, and with a quick Google search, he realized why. Nathalie and Alain Leroy had been top ice dancers from Canada twenty years ago, and two out of their three children were currently competing in the junior division. Jean-Jacques was their oldest child, and clearly was not as invested in figure skating as the rest of the family.

His phone buzzed with a text from Sara Crispino.  _ Meet us in the lobby in five minutes!  _ Coach Park had forced him to go out with her, her brother, and Emil Nekola for dinner in an attempt to make him friends. He was not looking forward to it at all. Resigned to his fate, he left his room and headed down to the lobby. The Crispinos and Nekola were already there and already screaming at each other. More precisely, Michele Crispino was screaming while Sara was rolling her eyes.

“I know what you’re thinking about my sister!”

“Which one of us is the telepathic twin again?” That was right, they were powered too. Sara had telepathy, and Michele had telekinesis. Matching powers to go with the matching jump combinations, like the triple lutz-triple loop combo Michele had done during his short program. “Mickey, I’m reading Emil’s mind right now, and I can guarantee you that he is not thinking about me.”

“You were reading my mind?” Emil gasped. “Cool! Wait, what was I thinking about?”

“Then what was he thinking about?” Michele screeched at the same time.

Seung-Gil approached the three warily as they continued bickering and joined their circle. Sara smiled at him, even as she continued yelling at her brother. “God, Mickey, for the last time, everyone here wants to be just friends! Look, let’s just decide where we want to go for dinner.”

Seung-Gil doubted that Emil and Michele would end up as “just friends”. Their fingers were connected by a red string. However, he wasn’t sure if they would ever make it past the “just friends” stage. At this rate, Michele was likely to die from constantly high blood pressure caused by stress he inflicted on himself about Sara. If Michele paid more attention to his sister and less to the “threatening” men around her, he would have realized long ago that she wasn’t interested in men.

The hotel door opened suddenly, letting in a gust of cold air, and Jean-Jacques said, “Thanks for talking to me, Yuri. Good luck in the free skate.” Ostensibly, Katsuki responded, but Seung-Gil was paying more attention to the red string between his own hand and the one on the hotel door. The Crispinos headed out the door that Leroy was holding open and Seung-Gil was forced to follow. He stared down at his feet for fear that the PPA agent would be able to see right through him.

“Hey, Seung-Gil. Nice seeing you again.”

“Hello,” he responded cautiously. Sara glanced back at them curiously.

“Say, have you changed your mind about registration?” The other man batted his eyelashes at him. “It’s quick and simple!”

“Like you?” Seung-Gil snapped.

Jean-Jacques laughed. “I’ll have you know that becoming a PPA agent requires a certain amount of intelligence.”

“Clearly they made an exception for you.” Hurrying to catch up with Nekola and the Crispinos, he didn’t dare look back. He didn’t want to think about the consequences of insulting his soulmate, let alone a PPA agent. When he caught up to the others at the crosswalk, Sara linked her arm through his.

“He was cute, huh? And he knew your name, too. Maybe he’s a fan of the Ice Prince.”

“I hate that name,” he grumbled. “And he’s a PPA agent from Canada, not a fan.”

“Oh, so he’s a powered paper pusher. Let me guess. He can shapeshift.”

“No.”

Sara threw her head back and laughed. “You actually know his powers?”

“He showed me his ID.”

“Wow, he really wanted to impress you. Hm. Does he have superspeed?”

“No.”

“Does he-”

Seung-Gil would rather not put up with her questioning for any longer. “He’s pretty much Captain America, but Canadian. His ID said his powers are ‘superhuman strength, agility, endurance, reflexes, durability, and healing’.”

“Then I’m calling him Captain Canada!” she declared.

“Where’s the restaurant? I don’t want to deal with any of you without food.”

Her expression turned solemn, and she gripped his arm a little harder. “Seung-Gil,” she said, in a low voice, “do you have a problem with him? Mickey and I are on good terms with the Italian branch of the PPA. If he’s harassing you…” she trailed off.

Damn. He had forgotten that Sara was telepathic. She probably already knew all his secrets.

“I do not know all your secrets. I try not to use my power that much. So tell me. Is he bothering you? Because I can make him stop.”

He shook his head. “Thank you, but he really hasn’t done anything. He’s a little pushy, but besides that, nothing.”

“Good to know.” She smiled at him. “Seung-Gil, you know you can tell me anything, right?”

“As if you didn’t already know everything,” he said, letting his mouth turn up a little at the corners.

“A smile!” Sara shrieked. “I got a smile from the Ice Prince! Mickey, Seung-Gil smiled at me!”

* * *

 

 It was Seung-Gil’s first time in Barcelona, but he wasn’t there to participate in the Grand Prix Final. He had made too many mistakes in the free skate to have a hope of landing on the podium at the Rostelecom Cup, let alone making it to the GPF. His red string had thrown him off irreparably, so he was left as a spectator rather than a competitor at the Final. Sara, as part of her continued attempts to befriend him, had invited him to Barcelona to watch her skate. Coach Park had accepted the invitation for him, claiming that he needed a “vacation”. So here he was, watching people’s strings turn brighter and brighter red as they ran to their loved ones in the airport. He hated airports. They were just gigantic messes of red strings, no matter where in the world you went.

The skaters were congregated in the lobby of the hotel and chatting with one another when he arrived. Sara waited for him to check in and leave his luggage in his room, then dragged him out to dinner with the men’s qualifiers. Otabek Altin was quiet, stoic, and refused to answer anyone’s questions except for Yuri Plisetsky’s. Viktor Nikiforov and Katsuki Yuuri were hanging off one another as if their lives depended on it, Christophe Giacometti following behind with an amused look on his face. Michele pried Sara off Seung-Gil’s side, and a few seconds later the space where she had been walking was filled with Phichit Chulanont.

“Seung-Gil! I’m so glad you came to Barcelona! I saw that new photo you posted on Instagram of your dog. She’s really cute!”

“Thank you,” he said, focused instead on the string connecting Nikiforov and Katsuki. It was practically glowing, even though the night was dark. He wondered if his would ever be as bright again.

“Hey, let’s take a selfie!” He looked up to oblige Phichit and was blinded by his camera flash. “We look good. Can I post this?”

“You can do what you want with it.” 

While they waited for their food, the other skaters began to show off their powers. Viktor and Yuri started creating snowflakes from the ice cubes in their glasses, which quickly devolved into a violent competition to determine who could make the prettiest one. Phichit, who could change the colors of anything he touched and used this talent liberally during his routines, changed Seung-Gil’s shirt from plain black to a rainbow pattern resembling his costume for Almavivo. Sara guessed everyone’s favorite book, and Michele dumped Emil out of his chair using his telekinesis when he decided that the latter had been staring at his sister for too long.

“Do you have a power, Seung-Gil?” Phichit asked.

“Nothing useful for party tricks,” he answered.

“Yuuri’s is useful depending on the kind of party,” Christophe Giacometti commented, chin on his hand. He was looking straight at Katsuki Yuuri with a lecherous gleam in his eyes. “Like last year’s banquet.”

Yuri Plisetsky spat out his water. “That was disgusting!”

“What are you talking about?” the Japanese Yuuri asked, obviously confused. “I don’t have a power.”

“Do explain,” Phichit said, smiling deviously. “I haven’t heard anything about last year’s GPF banquet.”

“That’s because I don’t remember it! That’s how uneventful it was.”

The restaurant erupted into chaos at that point. At the end of the night, everyone knew three things about Katsuki Yuuri: one, he knew how to party; two, he had the power of seduction; and three, he had used it on everyone present at last year’s GPF banquet. That did explain all the personal bests he had received for his Eros routine this year. 

As they made their way back to the hotel, Phichit sidled up to Seung-Gil again. “So you do have a power?”

“Not one that I can show to other people.”

“Now you’ve really got me curious.” Phichit looked at him curiously. 

Seung-Gil had never told anyone besides his parents about his power, and he had only told them because he was six and wanted to know why no one else saw the strings. It was a strange power to have, and hard to explain. Combined with his tendency to distrust everyone and everything on sight, he had never found someone to tell. But Phichit was looking at him without judgment, and he didn’t doubt that the other man would keep asking until he gave in.

“Do you know the myth of the red strings of fate?” he asked. The Thai skater shook his head. “They say that soulmates are connected by red strings tied to their pinky fingers. I can see those strings.”

“Do you see them all the time?”

“Yes. Cities are always covered in them. People see scenery from airplane windows, I see lots of red.”

“Have you met your soulmate?” the other man asked.

“Yes.” Something in his face or tone of voice must have told Phichit that he didn’t want to talk about it, and for the rest of the walk back to the hotel there were no words exchanged between the two of them.

A taxi was parked at the curb, and a man was paying its driver as four other people stood on the sidewalk with their luggage. As the group of skaters drew closer, a streetlight illuminated the five people, and Seung-Gil recognized the Leroy family from the Google results he had found back in Moscow.

“Agent Leroy!” Katsuki Yuuri yelled from the front of the group. Jean-Jacques turned to face them, looking unfairly beautiful in the dim street lighting.

“Hi, Yuuri! I told you, you can call me JJ! It’s good to see you. Congratulations on qualifying to the Grand Prix Final!”

“Thank you, Agent Leroy. I wanted to ask you about registration for the PPD. I just found out about my power. It turns out you were right back at the Rostelecom Cup.” While everyone else snickered at the reminder of Katsuki’s surprise and embarrassment, Seung-Gil increased his pace at the mention of registration. He did not want to deal with Agent Leroy’s pestering.

“Seung-Gil!”

He had been spotted. Dreading what would happen next, he turned around slowly.

“Hey, Seung-Gil! Remember me?” Jean-Jacques saluted him, and Seung-Gil’s eyes followed the red string attached to his pinky finger as it sailed in a graceful arc. “You want to register too?”

Out of nowhere, Sara appeared at his side. “You may be a PPA agent,” she snapped, eyes firmly on Leroy, “but if you keep harassing Seung-Gil, the Italian PPA will make sure you don’t get to wave around that ID anymore.”

“You sound like you’re part of the mafia,” Jean-Jacques laughed.

“The mafia has nothing on the Italian PPA.” The steel in Sara’s voice could have cut Agent Leroy open from head to toe. “Come on, Seung-Gil,” she said quietly, pushing him along. “I want you to be awake enough tomorrow to see me crush my short program.”

* * *

 

The women’s short program was one flawless performance after another, but the same couldn’t be said for the men. Yuri Plisetsky had set a new world record, but his Japanese counterpart had stumbled, and it was clear that Michele no longer connected to his music as he had before Sara had, understandably, told him to get a life apart from hers. Anything could happen in the free skate, though. Such was the reality of men’s figure skating.

That night, Phichit insisted on going out again for dinner. The same group from the night before, minus Katsuki Yuuri and Viktor Nikiforov, was pulled into his quest to find the best paella in the city. Seung-Gil headed down to the lobby to join them, but as he walked down the hallway, he spotted a face that he was getting to know all too well.

“Seung-Gil,” Agent Leroy called, “I think we got off on the wrong foot!” Leaving his curious family by the elevators, he closed the distance between them. Seung-Gil found himself frozen to the spot, unable to move, even as the other man closed in and his phone vibrated in his hand with another message from Phichit.

Jean-Jacques stopped with three feet between them. “I’m sorry if I made you uncomfortable. That really wasn’t my intention.” He continued talking, but Seung-Gil found the red string connecting their fingers much more interesting. He stared at the spot where it ran parallel to the edge of the hotel carpet, tuning out the man’s words. The string was bright enough not to blend into the carpet, but still fit the general color scheme. “-friends?”

He realized that he hadn’t heard anything that Agent Leroy had said. Very intelligently, he asked, “Huh?”

“I asked if we could be friends,” Jean-Jacques repeated, holding out the hand with the red string tied to it. Instead of shaking it as he should and usually would have, Seung-Gil simply held it and watched the way the thread coiled on the floor. Belatedly, he realized he hadn’t replied yet.

“Oh. Yes. Friends.” He sounded more and more ridiculous with every word he said. He pulled his hand out of Jean-Jacques’s and clarified, “I would like that.”

“Great! We’ll be seeing a lot of each other this week, since my siblings qualified in junior ice dance.”

“Oh. Congratulations to them,” he said. That certainly explained the other man’s presence in Barcelona.

“I used to skate too,” Jean-Jacques continued, waving goodbye to his family as they finally gave up on him and headed down in the elevator. Despite the five new text messages Seung-Gil had received from both Phichit and Sara, he couldn’t find it in himself to move. He would rather let this idiot of a man keep talking at him, and he would hang on to every word simply because they were soulmates.

“What happened?” Seung-Gil asked.

“Well, I registered with the PPD and the PPA recruited me. I lost pretty much all my time after that just training to be an agent. I miss skating sometimes, especially when I watch men’s singles. I could’ve been competing with the best of the best.”

“I’m sure you do invaluable work as a PPA agent.” This reassurance thing was entirely new to him. He wondered he had done it correctly.

“I sure do!” Then Agent Leroy winked at him. Seung-Gil hoped that the increase in the volume and speed of his heartbeat was only obvious to himself. “I wish I could tell you more, but it’s classified.”

After a few moments of silence where he tried to figure out what to say next, Jean-Jacques swooped in graciously with a heartrending smile. “Can I take you to dinner?”

Seung-Gil’s mind immediately went into overdrive.  _ Does he mean as friends? Does he mean as a date? What do I tell Phichit? Is that another message from Sara?  _ It was a miracle that he managed to stutter out, “Y-Yes,” in a vaguely timely manner.

“Great!” Jean-Jacques offered him his arm. “Shall we? I know a place that makes the best paella. I found it when I came here on PPA business a couple of years ago. Again, classified, but the paella isn’t.”

Dinner with Agent Leroy- or JJ, as the man insisted he be called- was more enjoyable than Seung-Gil had expected it to be. He was confident, a little arrogant, and easy to talk to. He had a tattoo of a maple leaf with an excerpt from the Canadian national anthem underneath on his arm, and when Seung-Gil told him it was tacky, only cackled and said, “If you think that’s tacky, wait till you see my tramp stamp!” He liked listening to and composing music. He loved watching his siblings compete in person, so whenever he could, he attended their competitions. He had a gorgeous fiancee, whom he had a ridiculous number of pictures of on his phone, and which definitely ruled out the possibility that their dinner outing was a date. After he had been shown several pictures, Seung-Gil could feel himself losing interest in the conversation and tuning back in to the red strings around him. Two of the waiters, who kept flirting with each other whenever they weren’t serving customers, were tied together with a string that was so bright red it hurt his eyes to look at it. An old couple sitting at the next table kept their hands so close together that he could only see their thread because five inches of it were hanging under the table.

JJ said something and Seung-Gil hummed in response, figuring that it was some more commentary about a tattoo he wanted to get or another trait he loved about his fiancee. But when the other man didn’t continue talking, he directed his attention back to his dinner companion. “I’m sorry, could you repeat that?”

“Am I boring you?”

“No! No, I just have this habit of spacing out. My coach hates it.” Despite himself, his eyes wandered to the pinky finger of the waiter rushing past.

“What are you looking at?”

Seung-Gil flushed and looked back at his plate, which still had a lot of food on it. “Nothing,” he mumbled. He stuffed another spoonful of rice into his mouth before he could start talking about red strings. When he looked up, JJ was watching him with narrowed eyes. He looked back down at his plate.

“Am I making you uncomfortable?”

“No.”

“Do you want to go back to the hotel?”

“I would like that,” he admitted quietly.

Once outside, Seung-Gil stared up at the sky, wishing that for once he could see something besides red strings. As it was, they just reminded him that his soulmate loved someone else. Hands in his pockets and eyes directed upwards, he didn’t notice the person in front of him until JJ yanked him backwards to prevent them from colliding.

“Thank you,” he said, very briefly meeting JJ’s eyes before focusing on the street in front of him.

“Do you like stargazing?” the other man asked. He looped their arms together again and pointed at a spot in the sky that was obscured by a red thread. “I see one over there.”

“I can’t see it,” Seung-Gil said.

“Maybe I can only see it because of my amazing enhanced eyesight.”

“Maybe,” he allowed.  _ Or maybe I just can’t see it. _

* * *

 

“You asked if I met my soulmate.”

Phichit Chulanont’s eyes widened in surprise. If Seung-Gil had been in his place, he wouldn’t have expected this topic from himself either. Especially in this particular situation, with sponsors, fellow figure skaters, and alcohol around. “Yeah. I did,” the other skater confirmed.

“I wish I hadn’t.”

Phichit watched him carefully. Seung-Gil fidgeted nervously with his empty glass, which he had been holding for Sara while she danced but that he ended up drinking himself. Then the other man reached out and turned his tie from bright orange to a dark purple. The string tied to Phichit’s finger was a silvery gray, indicating a distance of at least five thousand kilometers from his soulmate. “I like this color better. Are they that bad?”

“He’s nice enough.” He fingered his now-purple tie and admired it in the terrible banquet lighting. “He’s in love with someone else, though.”

“I guess that’s the problem with being able to see soulmates. You know who yours is, but they don’t. Everyone else can go after other people, but you can’t convince yourself to do it because you know you’re not meant to be.”

“Have you ever been stargazing?” Seung-Gil asked suddenly. It was clearly another question that Phichit hadn’t expected, because he tilted his head to the side curiously. 

“Yes, I have.”

“Could you show me, sometime? Somewhere away from a city, though. I can’t see the sky in the city.”

“Because of the strings?” Phichit asked. He nodded in response. “During the offseason. I’ll take you stargazing then.”

“Thank you.” Was he doing this ‘making friends’ thing correctly? Did people who exchanged contact information three years ago but only started talking two days ago tell each other personal things? Or make strange, time-demanding requests that they’d thought up on the spot to each other?

“Until then, let’s drink! You’ll see stars of another kind.” Phichit winked at him, produced another glass of champagne out of nowhere, and made him down it. “And let’s dance! This banquet’s boring. Let’s give everyone a night to remember!”

“They already had one last year,” Seung-Gil protested feebly, but he was already being dragged to the dance floor.

“You can show me how to do the mambo!”

Phichit could not hold his liquor very well. From the sidelines, where he had managed to escape after the fifth time his foot had been stepped on, Seung-Gil watched him dance with every single skater present. Apparently, when the Thai skater got drunk, he lost control of his power. He had already turned the floor glittery pink and, memorably, Yuri Plisetsky’s hair neon pink. The latter was only fixed after Phichit was able to stop laughing, which took some time. Plisetsky had not been happy.

“Enjoying yourself?” Sara asked. She was slowly sipping her own glass of champagne, watching Mila Babicheva lift Phichit in a move straight out of pairs skating. Seung-Gil looked enviously at the string connecting the two women.

“Phichit is funny,” he said. 

“I’ve never heard you say that about anyone before.”

“Maybe it’s the alcohol.” 

Sara smiled and reached out to straighten his collar. Earlier in the night, Phichit had untied Seung-Gil’s tie and unbuttoned his collar, leaving it a wreck. “We should get you tipsy more often.”

“Then I’d just build up a resistance to it.”

“Seung-Gil!” He found himself with an armful of Thai skater. His glass of water tumbled to the floor, shattering on the pink tile. “Seung-Gil, I know you have a soulmate, a one true love, but-” Phichit proceeded to stage whisper- “I think you’re really hot.”

He laughed. Twenty-eight pairs of eyes looked at him incredulously. That was right, he remembered. He rarely talked to anyone, let alone laughed. “Thanks, Phichit.”

“They don’t deserve you,” the other man continued. “You should let them know.”

“And how would I do that?”

Phichit perked up immediately. “Dance with me again! You didn’t finish showing me the mambo!”

“Because you stepped on my foot five times and I want to be able to continue skating!” His protests went unheard, and he was guided back to the dance floor. This time, he was significantly more tipsy and significantly worse at teaching, but had more patience. He proclaimed himself done after the second time he fell. “I think we should leave. Everyone’s already left.” He pointed to the empty banquet hall around them. There were only a few people left, including Katsuki Yuuri, who was watching them with amusement on his face. The silver medalist crossed over to them and hauled Phichit to his feet.

“I’ll be taking him to his hotel room. Thanks for entertaining him, Seung-Gil.”

“Any time!” he laughed, waving goodbye. 

“Did you have fun?” Sara asked. Surprisingly, she waiting for him alone, without Michele or Mila Babicheva by her side. He nodded. “That’s good. Come on. It’s past one AM already. They want us out of here.” Sure enough, a janitor glared at them as he mopped the floor nearby. 

Seung-Gil took her outstretched hand and followed her to the elevators. “You’re my favorite friend, Sara.”

She snorted. “I’m your only friend, aren’t I?”

“I think Phichit wants to be my friend. And I went out to dinner with someone else a few days ago!”

“Is that why you didn’t respond?”

“Yeah! I had dinner with JJ!”

“Who’s JJ?”

“Jean-Jacques Leroy. The Canadian from the PPA! He’s nicer than I thought he would be.”

Sara looked back at him with a concerned expression on her face. “The Canadian from the PPA?” she repeated.

“He wanted to be my friend, Sara. He asked if we could be friends. I said yes.”

“Of course you did,” she muttered. “You’re so starved for human connection, you’d say yes to anyone.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

She stopped walking and turned to face him, holding both his hands in hers. “Seung-Gil, be careful. PPA agents are dangerous. They’re trained to do things that ordinary people can’t. I know you probably won’t remember this tomorrow, but I can’t find it in myself to trust him. Please, please, please, be careful.”

“I’ll be careful,” he promised. He would promise her anything if it meant removing that expression from her face.

* * *

 

Seung-Gil’s next competition was the Korean national championship. He was expected to win, and win he did over the fifteen-year-old kid who was making his junior international debut. He expected the congratulatory texts from Sara and Phichit and was pleasantly surprised by the one sent from Michele’s phone that had clearly been written by his sister. When his phone beeped with another notification, he was confused because he had no other friends to send him texts. However, instead of a text, it was a news notification for an article titled “ISU to require all skaters to register with PPD”. His stomach suddenly clenched in panic, and he opened the ISU document linked at the bottom.

What the document boiled down to was that all skaters planning to participate in ISU-sanctioned competitions for next season needed to register with the PPD by the time Grand Prix assignments were released in May. If a skater was still unregistered by that time, the ISU would penalize them. The document didn’t specify how, which was why the first thing Seung-Gil did after he got home was to stop by his local PPA office. He hated government offices and government bureaucracy, but he would wait in line for the rest of his days to save his skating career.

Finally he got to the front of the line. The obviously overworked government employee asked, “What are you here for?”

“Registration in the database.”

The woman reached over to the stack of papers on her desk, pulled one out, and handed him the form. “Fill that out and then come back up to the counter.”

He headed over to an empty chair, sat down, and began filling it out.  _ A: Name _ . Lee Seung-Gil.  _ B. Date of birth.  _ June 6, 1996. He filled it out mindlessly until he came to the important part.  _ E: Power. _ Under a line of text saying “Please check one of the boxes below. If your power does not fit into any of the categories stated, please check the box labeled ‘Other’ and specify your power on the blank line.”, were the promised checkboxes.  _ Elemental or environmental powers… Energy manipulation… Energy or physical propulsion… Flight… Mentality-based abilities.  _ Underneath the general “Mentality-based abilities” box, there was a more specific “Soulmate identification” one. When he tried to check the box, he realized his hands were shaking.

_ Calm down. Calm down. Calm down. It’s just registration. JJ said that the PPA doesn’t do anything with this information.  _ Eventually, he decided to just get it over with and checked the box so quickly that the checkmark was twice as large as it needed to be. He rushed back up to the counter, willing himself to act as if nothing was out of the ordinary.

“I’m finished.” He handed her the form. She took it, said “Thank you”, and paid him no more mind. He took that as his cue to leave and headed out the door. When he got outside, he closed his eyes and sucked in a deep breath. Slowly, he let his eyes open, and naturally they fell on the pinky finger of his left hand. The string was silver. That made sense. Seung-Gil had watched JJ’s siblings perform at the Canadian national championships on his computer, and the livestream had briefly cut to their brother and parents during the wait for scores. He was probably still in Canada.

The amount of time he spent thinking about his soulmate was, frankly, pathetic. Seung-Gil needed to focus on his skating and making it to Pyeongchang, not some idiot who lived halfway around the world and was engaged to someone else. He shook his head forcefully and after looking both ways, crossed the street.

He hadn’t accounted for the fact that the information in the PPD would be available to the public, so when he received a link to a news article from Sara, he opened it without any idea of the contents. But when he read the title, he had to stop himself from throwing his phone across the room. 

“‘Skaters who only registered because the ISU forced them to’?” he repeated to himself, voice gradually increasing in volume. “‘GoldenSkate reveals the skaters who have registered since ISU Communication 2093’?”

Under the bolded heading “South Korea”, he found his own name accompanied by a picture.  _ Lee Seung-Gil, 2016 national champion. Power: soulmate identification. _ He couldn’t restrain himself anymore and threw his phone across the room. It thudded against the wall satisfyingly.

Over the next few days, messages and calls poured in. He ignored the ones from magazines and journalists asking for interviews, from Sara and Phichit asking if he had made the decision to register on his own, and only replied to his family to reassure them that he wasn’t dead. Coach Park lectured him about making rash decisions, to which he snapped that he would have had to register eventually anyways. He was coming to realize that was true. If he had registered in May, there would’ve been a bigger reaction. No matter how much he hated having to register, he had made the right choice to do it as soon as possible.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> -Next chapter: Four Continents and Worlds. Shit is stirred.


	2. on vague, unexplainable things

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Four Continents, Worlds, and lots of controversy.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> “...the sun detains the peasant woman in the shade of an almond tree or a cane field and makes her think on vague, unexplainable things…”

As if nothing more could go wrong, on February 17, 2016, smack in the middle of the Four Continents Championships, a multilateral team of powered PPA agents stopped a Turkish car bomber but left five buildings destroyed, 30 dead, and an international scandal in their wake. Despite their having had nothing to do with it, every registered skater in Seung-Gil’s acquaintance received anonymous and demeaning messages about Turkey and their powered status for days afterwards. He didn’t bother reading them, knowing that they could throw off his performance in the free skate, but Katsuki Yuuri was shaken so badly that he almost fell off the podium. There was no denying that public sentiment against powered persons had always been sour, and with this latest blunder by the PPA, tensions were approaching an all-time high.

Seung-Gil had clawed his way to second place, so he was obligated to take part in the press conference. Even with his notoriety for aggression and bluntness, he couldn’t escape the questions about registration, Turkey, and the messages he had received and kept receiving. He tried to indulge and engage the press as little as possible.

“Why did you only choose to register with the PPD last month?”

“Personal preference.”

“What did you think of ISU Communication 2093?”

“I thought I had better register before Grand Prix assignments were released.”

“What do you have to say about the PPA’s failed attempt to stop a suicide bomber in Turkey a few days ago?”

“I want to extend my sincerest condolences to those who lost loved ones. As for the PPA operation itself, I have no opinion on it.”

“How do you feel about your performance in the free skate?” Seung-Gil opened his mouth to tell the reporter that he was done taking idiotic questions, realized the question was actually about his skating, and proceeded to answer with such enthusiasm that his coach looked at him strangely.

When the entire ordeal was over, Katsuki Yuuri slammed his face into the table and groaned, “That was the worst press conference I’ve ever been part of.” Seung-Gil nodded in agreement. It had been terrible. “Why are they asking so many questions about registration and Turkey?”

“Registration I get,” Phichit said thoughtfully, turning the lapel of his jacket from black to grey and back again. “That’s probably because you two registered pretty recently. December for you, Yuri, and January for Seung-Gil. As for Turkey… I don’t know. I’d have to ask Sara.”

“Why would Sara know?” Seung-Gil asked. Phichit and Yuri both looked at him quizzically. “Am I missing something here?”

“The Crispinos are advisory agents for the PPA,” Phichit explained slowly. “They have been ever since they moved up to the senior division six years ago. I think they have B-class status.”

“B-class? That’s the second lowest classification for PPA agents, isn’t it?”

There were four levels of classification for PPA agents that were known to the public. The lowest was C-class, given to entry-level or inactive agents. Above that was B-class. B-class agents had at least 5,000 hours of work experience for the agency, whether it be paper pushing, field work, or advising, and had to be deemed fit for field work by the agency board. A-class agents, one level above, had at least 10,000 hours of work experience and were often full-time employees. The last, and most elite level, was S-class. S-class agents went through rigorous training for years on end, were interviewed by the board three times or more, and had to take physical, psychological, and intelligence tests several times a year. Because of these high standards, there were usually only around 20 S-class agents at a time.

“Well, considering that they’re active figure skaters, I doubt they have the time to work their way up.”

“I didn’t know they were PPA agents.”

“They’re surprisingly secretive people,” Phichit said. “I think it’s on their ISU bios, though.”

“It is,” Katsuki Yuuri confirmed. “I made my senior debut the same season they did, and I remember their coach kicked up a huge fuss about the ISU including it in their official profiles. We were seventeen at the time, and I think there was a lot of dislike for powered persons in Italy then. Not that there’s any less now, but people were actually acting on it then. Their coach’s concern was legitimate.”

Right on cue, Seung-Gil’s phone vibrated with a new message from Sara.  _ Congratulations on your silver medal! _ He sent back the obligatory _ Thank you _ , but with the new information he had just learned, it didn’t feel like enough. Should he say that he finally understood her references to the Italian PPA? Or that he didn’t understand why she hadn’t pushed him to register earlier? Or maybe, and this was what the complacent side of him wanted to do, he should leave it alone.

In the end, he decided to say nothing. That was the easiest thing to do.

* * *

 

Two more months went by, and news of more failed PPA operations, some from decades ago, came to light. And now, here in Boston for the world championships, for every fan who smiled at Seung-Gil there was one who spat at him and railed about how powered persons ruined everything. It rattled him to see the hatred some people had for him. Maybe they had always harbored this hatred, and this was the first time it was directed at him instead of someone else. This was why he hadn’t wanted to register in the first place.

“The ISU is concerned about your security!” Coach Park insisted. “Just take the PPA agent they’re sending to protect you!”

“If I have a PPA agent by my side throughout the whole competition, don’t I look complicit with them? I’ll look worse to the people who already hate me!”

“They just want you to be safe!”

Seung-Gil threw his hands up in the air. He could tell that this wasn’t an argument he was going to win. “Fine! Fine! I’ll take the PPA agent! When are they going to start following my every move?”

“They’re flying in agents from around the world right now, so tomorrow morning we’ll know the agent assigned to you. He or she will accompany you whenever you leave the hotel.”

In the morning, Seung-Gil was too preoccupied with the color of his string to focus on eating his breakfast. It was somewhere between dark red and stop sign red, which meant that JJ was relatively close by. His suspicions were confirmed when he spotted him by the door of the hotel, chatting gaily with another agent.

“The agent they assigned to you is named Jean-Jacques Leroy,” Coach Park said. Seung-Gil cursed himself. The probability of Leroy being the assigned agent should have been ridiculously low, but apparently the odds were not in his favor.

They met JJ at the door. The Canadian smiled gaily at him and introduced himself to Coach Park before herding them outside the hotel and over not to a taxi but to an SUV with dark windows. “This is our ride,” the agent declared, patting the hood of the car. “Official PPA vehicle right here!”

Coach Park eyed the vehicle with confusion. Seung-Gil knew she was wondering if it was really necessary to take a separate car. He wasn’t about to argue with JJ right now, though, so he opened the door and sat in the back.

“How have you been, Seung-Gil?” JJ asked brightly from the driver’s seat. “I saw that you finally registered with the PPD.”

“Did you see that in the GoldenSkate article?” he muttered under his breath.

“How do you two know each other?” Coach Park asked curiously. Seung-Gil didn’t look at her and chose to stare at the outside scenery instead. He knew that she wished he would be more social, but he had never bothered to oblige her. Lately she had let up on him after seeing the barrage of messages that Phichit and Sara sent him every day. Little did she know that for every ten messages they sent, he sent one back.

“We’ve met before at some competitions,” JJ answered. Seung-Gil watched Boston speed by in a blur of red strings and brick buildings. “At the Rostelecom Cup and the Grand Prix Final, I think.”

There was silence. He realized that JJ and Coach Park were waiting expectantly for him to confirm what the former had said. “Yes,” he said. “At the Rostelecom Cup and the Final.” He went back to staring out the window.

When he finally got onto the ice after what had felt like an eternity, he breathed in relief. The ice was familiar. His competitors less so, but significantly more familiar than the PPA agents scattered around the rink at various intervals. The usual competitive tension in the air was amplified and worsened by the fear of the protesters outside and, if he was honest, of the PPA agents who were supposedly there to protect them.

“How are you holding up?” Phichit asked him quietly as they watched Yuri Plisetsky execute a beautiful quad salchow on the other side of the rink. Everyone was much more subdued than usual, succumbing to the tension. Phichit whispered, Katsuki and Nikiforov were not flirting, and Plisetsky hadn’t screamed at anyone even once.

“Holding up under what?” He took a sip from his water bottle and ignored the way Phichit looked at him.

“Everything,” the other skater answered.

“It won’t affect my performance.”

‘“This isn’t an interview.”

“I will be fine. I was fine at Four Continents.”

Phichit obviously didn’t believe him, but let the topic go. He skated away to repeat the conversation with the other skaters, who were huddled around the edges of the rink but a good distance away from the PPA agents assigned to them. Seung-Gil noticed Sara and Emil Nekola waving wildly to him from one of the groups and skated over to join them. If he didn’t, Sara would nag him about not ignoring her later.

From her position behind the rink barrier, Sara said, “So I heard that a bunch of skaters received hate messages during Four Continents.”

“Is this your way of asking me if I received any?” he asked dryly.

“It’s my way of asking if I could see them.” She raised her eyebrows at him. “Go get your phone.”

“I don’t know why you’d want to read them,” he told her after getting his phone from Coach Park, who, as much as she wanted him to make friends, preferred that he practice his jumps instead of his social skills. “They’re not pleasant.”

“Mickey and I are advising the ISU as PPA liaisons,” she said. “We’re supposed to represent the skaters and their desires.”

“Are you two the reason why we’ve all got bodyguards?”

“That decision they made without us,” Michele said, arms crossed. “I think it just associates the skaters even more with the failures of the PPA.” Coming out of the mouth of a B-class agent, the words were surprising.

Sara narrowed her eyes at her brother. “We do good work.”

“But you can’t deny that the agency looks bad to the public right now.” The Crispinos looked like they were about to argue, so he excused himself, skated across the rink, and practiced his triple axel. He did not want to repeat his embarrassing fall from the Rostelecom Cup during the short program.

When practice was over, he skated to the rink exit and headed for Coach Park, but was immediately stopped in his tracks by the Crispinos again. They were both shaking in anger. “I can’t believe people would send these horrible messages to you!” Sara hissed. She made a motion as if to slam his phone against the rink barrier, but Seung-Gil managed to grab it from her hand before it made contact.

“Didn’t you two receive similar messages?” he asked. “Or worse because you’re PPA agents?”

“Yes, but you’re not involved with the PPA at all!”

“I’m registered in the PPD. For some people, that’s enough.”

“But you didn’t know anything about the situation in Turkey!”

“Did you?” Seung-Gil asked.

The twins both reared back simultaneously with matching shocked expressions.

“You did, didn’t you?” he pressed. There was a growing dread in his chest.

“Well, yes, but-” Sara stuttered, then stopped. “I don’t- I don’t have to explain myself. We’re not accountable to you.”

“Then who are you accountable to?” When they didn’t answer, he added, “This is exactly why people don’t trust the PPA. This is why  _ I _ don’t trust the PPA.” 

He walked away from them without looking back.

“You’re friends with the Crispinos?” JJ asked on the drive to a restaurant he had apparently found on a previous PPA-sanctioned “trip” to Boston. Seung-Gil wondered what the objective of that trip had been, and whether anyone had been hurt.

“Yes,” he answered distantly, focused on the string attached to his finger.

“I worked with them on a multilateral committee a couple months ago.”

That caught Seung-Gil’s attention. “By ‘a couple of months’, do you mean in February?”

“Yeah.”

“Did you work with them on Turkey?” From the seat next to him, Coach Park inhaled sharply. JJ met his eyes in the rearview mirror. “Yeah,” he repeated. There was a forced casualness to his tone.

“Oh my God,” Coach Park breathed, very quietly. There was silence for the rest of the drive. Seung-Gil stared at his pinky finger and wished that he could stop seeing the strings.

* * *

 

The short program was filled with mind-blowing performances. Spurred on by fear and the need to prove themselves, one skater after another scored personal bests, himself included. Seung-Gil skated fourth in the second-to-last group of skaters, and his score was high enough that he was able to sit with Phichit, who skated first in the last group, in the green room. As they watched Christophe Giacometti perform, the other skater nervously turned the surface of the table into an imitation of a rippling sea.

“Is there something on your mind?” he asked after watching the table change from light to dark blue twice. On Phichit’s other side, Guang-Hong Ji waited for the answer just as expectantly.

If Seung-Gil hadn’t been watching his face, he wouldn’t have noticed the Thai skater’s quick glance at the group of PPA agents in the green room with them. “I’m Just nervous about how high the Yuris might score,” Phichit answered. The smile on his face seemed forced. So it was something he couldn’t say in front of the agents.

“Maybe a game of darts will take your mind off things,” Guang-Hong suggested.

“We all know you’re blessed with perfect aim, you devious little shit,” Phichit growled, shoving the younger skater. His smile was more genuine this time. Guang-Hong laughed cheerfully.

Seung-Gil had to leave after Yuri Katsuki performed. Considering Christophe Giacometti was beginning to make flirtatious overtures on both him and Phichit, he counted himself lucky. JJ followed him out of the green room a few feet behind.

“How do you feel about your short program?” the agent asked.

“Good,” he answered. “I hope I do well in the free skate.”

“You will.” The confidence in his voice made Seung-Gil turn back to make sure that it was directed at him and not anyone else. JJ met his eyes with the same unwavering confidence that he had spoken with. “I believe in you.”

Seung-Gil glanced down at the string connecting their hands. With only three feet between them, it glowed so brightly that it was almost painful to look at. Right next to the string was JJ’s silver engagement ring. 

“I can never figure out what you’re looking at,” JJ said, startling him. “It always seems like you’re looking at something that’s both close and far away at the same time.”

“Or maybe I’m just an airhead like the commentators say.”

“I don’t think that’s true. I think you just see different things than the rest of us do.” Leroy stepped closer to him. “Like soulmates.”

Seung-Gil tensed up immediately and took a step back. “No. We’re not talking about this.”

“Then what can we talk about?” JJ asked, frustration evident in his voice. “We can’t talk about the PPA, we can’t talk about our powers, we can’t talk about other skaters, we can’t talk about anything!”

“There’s a wide range of topics beyond that,” he said neutrally. He hadn’t expected JJ to blow up like this. He would have thought a PPA agent would have more control. Sure, he hadn’t talked to the other man all that much the last couple of days, but that was how he always was.

“The topics aren’t the problem. It’s your unwillingness to talk to me!”

“This is how I always am.”

“You were just talking to Ji and Chulanont in the green room. I’ve seen you talking to Sara Crispino! You can talk, you just don’t want to talk to me!”

They were attracting attention from passerby. “Can we not do this in a public space?” he asked.

JJ groaned in frustration and gestured wildly at him. “This! This is what I’m talking about! You keep shutting me down!”

“What do you want from me?”

The other man bit his lip, visibly forced himself to calm down, and spat out, “I want that dinner we had in Barcelona.”

Seung-Gil blinked. “You want paella? We’re in Boston. It won’t be as good.”

“I don’t- that’s not the point! I meant the connection we had. We were having a conversation, and it went well for the first hour, and then you went back to- to being an airhead!” He flinched at the vehemence in JJ’s voice. “I just want that first hour back.”

Seung-Gil paused, thought about what had just been said, and observed, “The PPA must really starve you of human connection if you’re trying to connect with me.”

JJ threw his hands in the air. “God! I don’t even know why I asked to be assigned to you!”

“You asked to be assigned to me?”

“Because I thought we were friends!”

“Sorry, I never really got that message,” Seung-Gil said. “Or maybe I forgot it. You know how I am. Airhead and all.” There was a part of him that was hurt byhis soulmate’s harsh words and tone, and a bigger part of him tucked that part into a tiny corner and set out to protect himself with sharp words and angry glares.

“I didn’t- I didn’t mean that,” the other man said. “I don’t think that about you.”

“That’s a nice change from everyone else, I suppose.” He set off down the hallway again at a faster pace this time. If he was lucky, he might only have to do a couple of interviews, and then he could go back to the hotel and rid himself of JJ.

“I’m sorry!” Leroy appeared at his side in no time. “Look, Seung-Gil, I was mad, and I let it get the better of me, and I’m sorry.”

He forced his facial muscles into the most neutral expression he could muster. He might as well try to be fair. “You were stating your opinion. It is being taken into consideration.”

“What does that mean?”  
“I am going to ignore it until you become frustrated with me again, at which point I will ignore it some more.” As they said, honesty was the best policy.

“What makes me different from Phichit and Sara?” JJ demanded. “I don’t get it. I’m friendly, engaging, I’ve made honest attempts at talking to you. What have they done that I haven’t? What do they have that I don’t?”

_ Soulmates who aren’t me _ , Seung-Gil thought. Out loud, he said, “That’s my business.”

“Don’t I have the right to know why you dislike me?”

“I don’t dislike you. I could never dislike you.”  _ You’re my soulmate _ , he didn’t say.  _ I will most likely grow to love you. _

JJ looked at him strangely. Because they were walking side by side, Seung-Gil could see all the little details he hadn’t seen before: the crinkles around his eyes, his chapped lips, the places where his undercut needed to be trimmed. His breath caught in his throat for a terrifying instant and then he forced himself to breathe again.

“Then why do you treat me like I’m a piece of gum stuck under a desk?”

“I don’t understand this analogy.”

JJ didn’t answer him. Eventually he said, “You’re really confusing.” Then he perked up. “But I’m determined to get to the bottom of this mystery!” At Seung-Gil’s puzzled expression, he clarified, “You’re the mystery. You’re mysterious. I’m gonna- I’m gonna stop talking.”

“Good.”

* * *

 

_ You need to see this. _

Seung-Gil stared at his phone, trying to comprehend why Sara had texted him now after three days of total silence. The ladies’ free skate was tomorrow, so it had to be both urgent and important if she wanted him to leave the hotel at this hour. After a few seconds of staring at his phone, he sighed and shrugged on his coat. If she wanted to skate on less than six hours of sleep, that was her choice. He wondered how she had persuaded the PPA agent assigned to her to go out this late at night. Or maybe she hadn’t bothered with the agent at all. After all, she was on herself. Speaking of PPA agents, he wasn’t supposed to leave the hotel without JJ. Well, he was twenty years old, and he could walk to a restaurant by himself just fine.

Porters Bar and Grill was long, narrow, and dimly lit. Sara and Michele were sitting at a booth in the back, engaged in conversation with someone facing away from the door. When he sat down, he realized that the mystery man was JJ. Hadn’t Sara once told him not to trust JJ?

“Seung-Gil! Fancy seeing you here!” Leroy exclaimed. He flashed his million-dollar smile full of perfectly straight and white teeth. “Aren’t you supposed to be accompanied by a PPA agent whenever you leave the hotel?”

“There are by three PPA agents with me right now. Is that sufficient?”

“I guess it will have to do,” JJ sighed dramatically. Seung-Gil paid him no mind and turned to Sara. “What do you want me to see?”

She pushed over a stack of white papers stapled together. Written across the first page in bold Times New Roman was “ISU Communication 2094 - Draft”, and every page was watermarked with a large stamp reading “Confidential”. “Am I allowed to see this?”

“That doesn’t matter,” she said dismissively. “Read the first paragraph on the next page.”

Obediently, he turned to the second page and began reading.  _ To eliminate the possibility of cheating and reduce anti-powered persons sentiment, every powered skater must wear a suppressor during judged performances at ISU-sanctioned competitions beginning with the 2016-2017 season. Failure to comply will result in immediate cancellation of prize money and revocation of awards, medals, or points counting towards ISU rankings. _

He stopped there and looked up at the Crispinos, who were watching him intently. “The ISU thinks we’re cheating?” he asked incredulously.

“They told me that this is just a precaution.” Sara shrugged. Something in her words reminded Seung-Gil of a conversation he had had before. In fact, JJ had once called registration with the PPD a precaution. In the end, what were these precautions useful for?

There was a more pressing question that he wanted to ask. “What’s a suppressor?”

In response, Sara pulled out a slim band from her bag. It was white with three red dots in the center and resembled an American Fitbit. “This is a PPA suppressor that we use in training. You put it on, wait for the dots to turn green, and bam! You can’t use your power anymore.”

If he wore that, he wouldn’t see the strings anymore? That sounded useful, but he doubted that it would actually work. “May I try it?” he asked. His question surprised the three agents, but Sara nodded and handed it over. He slipped it onto his right wrist, watched the dots turn from red to green, and only then dared to look at the pinky finger of his left hand.

There was no red string there. He was partially aware of his mouth dropping open, and then he grabbed JJ’s left hand and looked at it too. 

He couldn’t see the string that connected their hands. With so little distance between them it should have been bright, bright red, but there was nothing in the space where he had seen the thread not thirty seconds ago.

Seung-Gil turned in his chair and stared at the rest of the patrons. No red strings soared out the window and into the night. No threads coiled between the couple flirting at the bar. Nothing ran through one wall and out another.

It occurred to him that the city landscape would look vastly different without the mess of red strings that always occupied his entire field of vision. Excitement bubbled up in his chest. He wanted to know what the city would look like, and now he  _ could _ know what it looked like… Ignoring the startled exclamations from the people seated at the table, he pushed himself out of his chair, tripped over his own foot in his haste to get to the door, and stumbled out of the restaurant.

Without the strings, Boston was transformed. He could see the buildings in their entirety and the birds on the telephone lines. Where everything had felt crowded and compressed before, it seemed that there was now enough space for everything.

He looked up at the night sky. Very far away, almost hidden by the glare of the streetlamps, was a twinkle of white light. There were no red lines crisscrossing the sky. It was just a large, deep, beautiful expanse of nothingness with the promise of stars and life beyond.

For the first time in his life, he could see the sky clearly.

“What are you doing?” JJ asked, puncturing his bubble. Seung-Gil was forced to make eye contact with him, who was standing in his personal space and holding his arm in an iron grip. Belatedly, he realized that he was standing on the very edge of the crosswalk. He stepped back.

“I’m seeing Boston for the first time.”

JJ herded him back inside the restaurant, where the Crispinos were muttering to each other. When he sat down again, Seung-Gil asked, “May I keep this?”

Sara and Michele looked at him as though he was crazy. “Why would you want to keep that?” the latter sputtered. “Wearing a suppressor is like cutting off a part of yourself!”

“I don’t need that part of myself,” he shot back bluntly. “My power is useless, annoying, and distracting. This- this helps me see.”

Sara leaned forward. “What do you mean by ‘see’?”

He considered how to explain it. The easiest way was to let her see for herself. “If I thought of an image,” Seung-Gil asked, “would your telepathy enable you to see it?”

“I’m not sure if it can work that way, but I’m definitely willing to try. Go ahead.”

He took a moment to breathe in and visualize what he had just seen outside. “This is Boston to me with the suppressor.” Sara’s forehead furrowed as she concentrated, and relaxed as she received the image. 

“Go on.”

Then he thought of the way the city streets had looked as he walked to the restaurant. Red strings curled between buildings, launched into the sky, disappeared around corners and stretched across the streets. Across the table, Sara gasped sharply. “That’s Boston without the suppressor.”

“Sara, what did you see?” Michele demanded in alarm.

“She saw what I see every day,” Seung-Gil answered. “She saw the red strings of fate.”

There was an awkward silence. Michele glared, JJ was tense, and Seung-Gil waited for it all to pass. He was not sure they understood the implications of his power, but that was not his concern at the moment. When Sara finally regained enough composure to look him in the eye, he asked, “May I keep the suppressor?”

A beat passed. Then she nodded.

Sara clearly didn’t want to end the conversation, but when Michele saw the time, he insisted that they all leave the restaurant and head back to the hotel. The siblings hurried ahead, leaving Seung-Gil to walk behind with JJ. “You really managed to rattle Sara there,” the other man said noncommittally. Seung-Gil would have believed his air of casualness, but he saw the tension in his shoulders and knew immediately that it was a facade.

“I just showed her what I see,” he repeated, twisting the suppressor around his wrist. Even though it was past midnight and very dark, the green dots still glowed brightly. It was a nice contrast to all the red he usually saw.

“Since you basically told us that your power is seeing the red strings of fate, is it okay if I ask a question?” As they passed another streetlight, JJ’s head was illuminated from behind by the orange light. There was a sudden, painful pang in Seung-Gil’s chest. A friendly reminder that even if he couldn’t see the strings, he and JJ were still soulmates, and they were only friends.

“I’ll answer it if I want to,” he said. A motorcycle zoomed by, and he watched it pass, expecting to see a red string trailing in its wake. When he didn’t see one, he was briefly surprised before he remembered the suppressor.

“Are they what you’re always looking at? The strings, I mean.”

“There are so many of them that I can’t see anything else,” he answered truthfully. When Seung-Gil glanced over at JJ, the other man was watching him with a very strange expression. “Is there something you want to say?”

“So, back in Barcelona, when I pointed out the star to you, could you even see it?”

“No,” he scoffed. “It was covered by a red string. The sky is usually entirely obscured with them, especially in cities.” He noticed that JJ wasn’t walking next to him anymore. “Why are you stopping? The hotel is still three blocks away.”

“Just- Seung-Gil- Is that what you were doing earlier outside the bar? Looking at the sky?”

“Yes. That was the first time I have ever seen a clear sky.”

“How can you say such things so nonchalantly?”

“I’m just stating facts.”

“But they’re…” JJ gestured wildly. “They’re mind-blowing facts!”

“Mind-blowing to you, not to me.” Leroy stayed quiet while they walked down another city block. As he acclimated to the new world around him, Seung-Gil realized that he hadn’t asked the important questions. The point of him going to Porters had not been to try out the suppressor, it had been to discuss ISU Communication 2094 and its implications. Those were questions only the Crispinos could answer, but since they were far ahead, he had could only ask JJ. “Since when did Sara trust you?”

The other man turned to him with a surprised look on his face. “Sara doesn’t trust me?”

“Back in December she didn’t,” he answered. “In fact, she specifically told me not to trust you.”

“We only started working together in February! She didn’t even know me then.”

“Maybe that’s why,” he mused. “Maybe she trusts you now because you worked together in Turkey.”

“I never said anything about Turkey,” JJ said defensively.

“Well, what else could you two have worked on in February?” His question made the other man stop talking, but only for a few moments.

“I was the Crispinos’ superior officer in Turkey,” Leroy said, apropos to nothing. “I’m an S-class agent, so they had to listen to me. They had to trust me if they wanted the mission to succeed.”

“It didn’t succeed, though.”

“We did our best, okay? We tried. That’s more than the local law enforcement wanted to do.” His face morphed into an ugly, angry expression that told Seung-Gil he had hit a nerve. “The media keeps criticizing the PPA for it, even though two months have passed. We minimized the destruction as much as possible. Don’t get me wrong, okay? I know we could have done a lot better. The agency board knows we could have done better. They wanted to demote me from S-class. After everything I’ve done, dozens of successful missions, one goes wrong, and they suddenly want me to take a break and look into other careers!” JJ ran a hand through his hair and took a deep breath. 

Seung-Gil was still stuck on the part about him being an S-class agent. What was he doing bodyguarding a figure skater who distrusted the PPA and wanted nothing to do with him? Why was he wasting his time? “Maybe that’s why I got this assignment. Maybe they’re trying to convince me that I should go into private security.” He laughed, a sharp barking sound that cut through the night air. “They might as well have just told me to my face that I can’t go on another mission until the public forgets about Turkey.”

Seung-Gil kept his mouth firmly shut. If JJ wanted to continue his self-deprecating monologue, he could continue without having to worry about any interruptions. He had three more days to ask the Crispinos his remaining questions. He wanted to know why they had shown ISU Communication 2094 to him first and what exactly they were going to do next. Before he could get his answers, though, he would have to get through the rest of the competition. After all, it was the World Championships. Pyeongchang was watching, and he did everything for Pyeongchang.

* * *

 

Despite his sense of impending doom by ISU regulation on the horizon, Seung-Gil felt good. It showed in his practices the next day, impressing Coach Park, and it was present in his free skate the day after that as well.

“That is a personal best for Seung-Gil Lee!” He heard an American commentator exclaim as he received his score in the kiss and cry. “Absolutely amazing. That was undoubtedly the best free skate of his career, and to be honest, it was one of the best performances I’ve seen at this competition. After the disappointment of not qualifying to the Grand Prix Final in December, Seung-Gil’s season has only gone up with a silver medal at the Four Continents Championships back in February and amazing performances here at the world championships. This must feel like redemption.”

His sixth-place finish two points above Phichit felt better than the silver medal he had barely snatched at Four Continents. He knew his country would be proud. To be entirely honest, he could only credit the suppressor on his wrist. The absence of red strings had finally let him focus on his surroundings, his coach, and his skating.

“I told you so,” JJ said triumphantly after Seung-Gil finished an interview. At his confused look, he clarified, “I said you’d do well in the free skate. And I was right.” He crossed his arms and smirked.

“Good for you. I hope you placed money on it.” He picked up his phone and texted Sara to ask if they could have dinner again that night. Instead, he got an angry reply from Michele demanding to know if he was trying to ask out his sister. Michele could be ridiculous sometimes. He had calmed down a lot since Sara had slapped some sense into him at the Rostelecom Cup last year, but there were still times when his overly protective side came through. Seung-Gil sighed, told the Italian skater that no, he was not trying to ask Sara out, and finally got an apologetic confirmation for 8 P.M. at Porters again. He turned back to JJ. “I’m meeting the Crispinos tonight for dinner. Are you coming?”

“Are you asking me if I want to go out with you? Voluntarily? As friends?” JJ shrieked dramatically, one hand over his heart. The volume of his voice attracted the attention of a nearby ice dance team. “Oh, Seung-Gil, we’ve come so far! I’m so proud of you!”

“I asked if you were coming because I don’t know if you’re still assigned to me.” Seung-Gil finished shoving his things into his duffel bag and walked away, ignoring JJ sputtering behind him. “Are you coming or not?” he called back over his shoulder.

“To the medal ceremony or to dinner?”

“Both.”

“I’m going to both for sure! There’s no way you’re getting rid of me before you leave Boston!”

True to his word, JJ happily accompanied him to Porters, chattering on about random topics the whole time. He talked about his favorite movie, the book he had read on the plane from Canada, and was in the middle of telling a story about how his fiancee had dropped her engagement ring down the drain when they finally reached the restaurant. Seung-Gil hurried inside and sat down across from the Crispinos while JJ attempted to resume his story. Eventually, Sara took pity on him and asked, “So what did you want to talk about, Seung-Gil?”   
“I wanted to know why you showed me the draft of that ISU communication two days ago.”

“The public deserves to know.” Her reply sounded both generic and rehearsed and was not the answer he had wanted at all.

“But why me? Why not someone who socializes more with the other skaters? Or someone who actually approves of the PPA?”

“That’s exactly why we showed you,” Michele broke in. “You don’t like the agency, so you’re more likely to speak your mind. And since you’re not the friendliest person in the world, the news is less likely to get out before we’re ready for it to.”

“We want to know what you think of ISU Communication 2094,” Sara said. “The ISU wants to finalize this next week and we need to know if we should push for them to scrap it or let them go ahead with it.”

Seung-Gil considered what she had said, and considered his own opinion. What he said next could affect the future of several skaters. He thought about whether he would want to compete against Viktor Nikiforov wearing a suppressor, or Viktor Nikiforov with his ice magic unrestrained. “I don’t think this is a good idea,” he said, and the Crispinos nodded. They had most likely been expecting a similar response. “The ISU forced us to register recently, and now they’re forcing us to wear suppressors? The timing is suspicious. It makes them look like they are specifically targeting powered skaters.” 

He paused to consider the personal impact on himself and his fellow skaters. “As a skater who had nothing to do with the PPA before I was forced to register, I can’t help but feel targeted. I had to release private information about myself to the public at a time when that information makes people hate me. Now the ISU is telling me to suppress that private part of myself that I never wanted to make public. If I didn’t like the way the world looks to me with the suppressor on, I would be so angry that I wouldn’t be able to talk to you coherently right now. I think this can only hurt all of us.” He stared down at his hand, visualizing the red string and wondering what life would be like if he had been born without the ability to see the threads that connected soulmates. Would he hate powered persons as much as he himself was hated right now?

“We’ll definitely keep that in mind,” Sara said after a few moments. Then she turned to the man sitting next to him. “JJ, what do you think? We need the official PPA perspective on this too.”

“You know I’m not exactly the poster boy for the agency right now,” JJ said self-deprecatingly.

Sara tilted her head and gave him a look that indicated that his answer was unsatisfactory. “You’re an S-class agent. You might as well have their mission statement tattooed on your forehead to go along with the Canadian anthem on your bicep. You know what the board would think.”

JJ pursed his lips. “You know my opinion on suppressors. As for the board’s opinion… any restriction on powered persons, no matter in what field, could easily turn into a restriction on the agency. And the agency hates restrictions.”

Sara nodded. Seung-Gil wasn’t even sure why she had asked for JJ’s opinion. Wasn’t she an advisory agent for the PPA? And B-class, too, which meant she had at least 5,000 hours under her belt. Wouldn’t that have given her enough experience to know the agency’s probable viewpoint on things like this? He supposed that 5,000 hours as a B-class agent would never measure up to the experience- no, lifestyle- of an S-class agent.

“Congratulations on your sixth place finish, by the way,” Sara said as they walked back to the hotel. “I was in the stands watching. Your performance was absolutely riveting. I couldn’t look away.”

“So was yours,” he returned. “Your silver medal is well-deserved.”

“You know, if you had landed the triple flip, you probably could have taken the gold from Mila Babicheva,” JJ said. Michele puffed up, instantly ready to defend his sister’s honor, but Sara only laughed good-naturedly.

“Mila can have the gold. She’s the one with the new world record, after all. I’m happy with my performances.” She looped her right arm through Seung-Gil’s and her left through her brother’s. “If I show up to the gala and strip like little Yuri did at the Final, do you think Mila would pay more attention to my exhibition?”

That really got Michele going. Seung-Gil allowed himself to smile at the spectacle that Sara’s suggestion would create. On his other side, JJ hooked their arms together, making their little group a string of four. They were taking up a good portion of the sidewalk, but no one tried to change their positions. Arm in arm, they made their way back to the hotel.

Two days later found Seung-Gil standing outside the airport, exchanging goodbyes with JJ as Coach Park waited by the doors to the entrance.

“So this is the end of the line, huh?” JJ sked. He was leaning casually against the door of the SUV he had driven for the entirety of Worlds, silver-rimmed sunglasses perched on his head. His posture was relaxed, but the look in his eyes was guarded and a little timid. It occurred to Seung-Gil that he had never definitively affirmed their friendship.

“There’s always next season,” he said. “Unless you’re not planning to come to competitions next year.”

JJ’s entire face lit up, and in that moment, he was devastatingly beautiful. “Of course I’m coming to competitions! I’ll come to all of yours!”

Maybe it was that moment that lead Seung-Gil to say what he said next. It was rash, not thought through, and the probability that he could actually keep his promise was low. “You’ll be going to the Grand Prix Final next season, then,” he said. “Next season I’ll make it, and you’ll watch me perform.”

The other man smiled at him. “I’ll be cheering for you.”

“Thank you.” He turned away to join Coach Park. Somehow their conversation didn’t quite feel finished. Right before he reached the doors, JJ called out, “Seung-Gil!”

He turned back. Leroy was no longer leaning against the SUV. He looked poised to run over in an instant. “Can I get your phone number? You know, so we can tex?”

“Get it from Sara,” he yelled back. After a moment’s thought, he added, “Feel free to text me whenever you want.” 

This time, when he entered the airport, he felt satisfied with the ending of their conversation.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> -When I was writing this I realized that I got the YoI timeline wrong. In the show the GPF takes place during the 2014 Barcelona GPF, not the 2015 Barcelona GPF. Oh well. It's all fine.  
> -Shoma Uno is good at darts. I love Shoma Uno.  
> -According to Google, Porters Bar & Grill is decently close to TD Garden, where 2016 Worlds was held.  
> -The real ISU Communication 2094 is the new Ice Dance scale of values.  
> -I’ve seen the triple flip jab on Tumblr. People claim that if Shoma Uno had landed his triple flip in his free skate, he would have won the 2017 world championships. I don’t know how true that is.  
> -Next chapter: the offseason, Trophee de France, NHK Trophy, and arriving in Marseille.


	3. you have not seen their hearts bleed

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The 2016 Grand Prix season.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "The people do not complain because they have no voice, do not move because they are lethargic, and you say that they do not suffer because you have not seen their hearts bleed."

“Listen to this,” Coach Park said, shoving earbuds and her computer at him. Obediently, he put the earbuds in his ears and pressed play.

For the first two minutes, two violins painted a bleak scene in Seung-Gil’s mind. The deep strumming of the instruments reminded him of the grey, miserable skies of Moscow crisscrossed with red strings. Then a gentle pitter-patter of notes lifted him out of the melancholy scene, only to plunge him ten feet under the sea. He imagined himself reaching up towards the surface as he sank further and further down. The music ended quietly, fading away into nothingness.

He removed the earbuds. “That is beautiful.”

Coach Park smiled. “Good. I think it should be your free skate music for this season.”

Seung-Gil frowned. “I’m not sure I can express the range of emotions in this piece.” One of the most frequent comments he received on his skating was on his lack of facial expressions. To sell this music, his face could not stay frozen in its usual sullen glare.

“Then there is a lot you can learn from it.” She raised her eyebrows at him expectantly. “I can find another piece if you don’t like this, but I think you can both improve and succeed with this music.”

He looked down at the computer screen. The piece was titled “A Journey”, and more than anything else, that called to him. “I like it,” he said. “I would enjoy skating to it this season.”

When he turned on his phone after practice, he saw that he had been added to a gigantic group chat that had exploded with over five hundred messages. He elected to ignore it and opened his private conversation with Sara instead.

_ I’m sorry _ , the most recent text read.  _ I thought Michele and I succeeded in persuading the ISU not to pass Communication 2094, but I guess they were just waiting to release the GP assignments.  _ Linked in the message was said communication, published barely an hour after he had started practice that day.

Defeat was a heavy weight in his chest. He hurled his phone across his room. Then he buried his face in his hands and let out a low, long groan. 

His phone beeped with an incoming call. Seung-Gil crossed the room, picked it up, and saw that it was from the group chat. He hated group chats. They had a tendency to explode with messages at the most inconvenient times and required a good deal of attention to figure out who was talking to whom at what time. At the beginning of their acquaintance Phichit had tried to add him to one, but he had removed himself from the conversation every time he was added back. Eventually Katsuki Yuri had told Phichit to let him go, and he had been allowed to return to his private-messages-only world. However, it seemed his utopia had been interrupted once more.

He might as well get the removing himself part over with as soon as possible, then. He opened the group text, clicked to the settings, and removed himself from the chat. Almost immediately, he received a text from Phichit, demanding to know why he had both declined their call and removed himself from the group.  _ You know I don’t like group chats _ , he sent back.

_ But this is important! _ Seung-Gil rolled his eyes. Hamster videos were “important” to Phichit. His phone beeped again with another text.  _ Have you seen the news? About the newest ISU communication? _

Oh. The other skaters must have seen it too by now, and they had undoubtedly been worrying themselves about it ever since it had been released. It was entirely possible that three hundred of the five hundred messages that he hadn’t bothered to read were just voice recordings of Katsuki Yuri screaming, and the other two hundred derogatory messages about the ISU from Yuri Plisetsky. He must have been added back into the chat as part of the mass panic.

_ Yes, I have _ , he texted.  _ What good does it do to add me back when we know I won’t contribute anything to the conversation? _

_ We’re trying to figure out an appropriate international response here. _ Phichit continued sending messages afterwards, but he set the other skater on mute and went to eat dinner.

Similarly to when the ISU had required all powered skaters to register with the PPD, Seung-Gil’s phone was bombarded with calls and messages from the media. Similarly to what he had done then, he powered it down and cut off all contact with the outside world until Coach Park told him that the furor had died down. When he turned his phone back on that night, he had 20 panicked messages from Sara and Phichit and 1200 unread messages from the group chat he had previously tried to remove himself from, and he didn’t even try to count the notifications he had received from social media.

The most recent message in the group chat was  _ “We’re doing it for sure” _ from Viktor Nikiforov.  _ Doing what _ ? Seung-Gil wondered idly as he thumbed open the chat settings and once more deleted himself from the chat. Not ten seconds had passed when a call from Phichit lit up his screen. The quick response time amazed him, as did the large amount of time the Thai skater probably spent on his phone. Reluctantly, he accepted the call.

“Seung-Gil, you’re back on your phone! I thought you died!”

“Clearly I’m still alive,” he grumbled, petting his dog when she clambered onto his lap. “I was simply avoiding the media.”

“Well, did you see what Viktor came up with for our international response?” He was about to say no, but Phichit steamrolled on. “I think it’s really extreme. I mean, he can afford to do it, but he’s from a larger federation that will support anything they do.”

“No, I haven’t seen it,” Seung-Gil said when the other skater paused to take a breath. “What does he want to do?”  
“It’s not just something he wants to do anymore. He’s actually going through with it, and he’s convinced the entire Russian team to do it with him.” Despite the phone making his voice tinny, Phichit sounded firm and serious. “They’re not going to participate in the Grand Prix Series.”

Seung-Gil blinked. What had he just heard? “I’m sorry, did you say that the Russian team is not going to participate in the Grand Prix Series?”

“Yes.”

“But they won’t be allowed to go to any other competitions for the first half of the season! Will their federation really let them go through with it?”

“The federation is big enough to support them.” Phichit paused. “Yuuri is going along with them. He’s decided not to go to his GP assignments either.”

The only sound in the room was the crackling of static over the phone. Viktor Nikiforov, five-time world champion, reigning Olympic champion, living legend of the figure skating field, had suggested skipping the entire Grand Prix series? He couldn’t believe it. If the Russian team had truly agreed to this, that meant Popovich and Plisetsky were out too. In the women’s field, that meant Mila Babicheva, current world champion, would not compete either. A significant portion of the ice dance and pairs teams would disappear as well. And if Katsuki Yuuri could convince other Japanese skaters to join him, the ISU would lose its two largest member federations.

“Are you going to join them?” Seung-Gil asked.

“I have to continue representing my country,” Phichit answered. “And someone has to prove that powered persons don’t need their powers to win. What about you?”

“I do everything for Pyeongchang,” he said. 

“So I’ll see you this fall, then.”

“You’ll see me,” he confirmed. He hung up.

Opening his computer, he pulled up the Grand Prix assignments. This year he had been assigned to the Trophee de France and NHK Trophy again. Georgi Popovich had been assigned to both of those events with him, and Nikiforov had been assigned to NHK Trophy as well. Two strong competitors, removed in one fell swoop. It made him wonder who would qualify to the Final this year.

That reminded him of his embarrassing claim that he would make it to the Finals that December, and consequently of JJ. His soulmate texted him regularly with a few lengthy breaks justified by claims of PPA business. In fact, JJ had maintained radio silence for almost a month now. Seung-Gil wasn’t sure that he even knew Communication 2094 had been released.

As if summoned by magic, his phone dinged with a new text from JJ.  _ My siblings chose their free program music today! _

_ What did they choose _ ? he asked, and received a Youtube link in response. He took a few moments to listen to it, then typed,  _ This is nice _ .

_ I’m so excited for them. This is their last season in juniors. I’m sure they’re gonna crush everyone! _ JJ cared very deeply about his siblings and had an impressive knowledge of figure skating for someone who didn’t skate competitively. If he hadn’t been recruited by the PPA, he most likely would have been among the top ten skaters in the men’s field.  _ Have you chosen your FS music yet?  _

Seung-Gil sent him the link to “A Journey.” Four minutes later, the text bubble indicating that the other man was replying popped up again.  _ It’s kind of sad, isn’t it? _

_ There’s a lot I can learn from it, and it can be interpreted in different ways. I want something a little more upbeat for my SP, though. _

_ How about a tango?  _ JJ suggested.

“A tango could work,” Coach Park said thoughtfully. “Considering the success you had with Almavivo last season, I definitely think that’s a viable option. How about ‘Tango de Roxanne’?”

“Can we remove the lyrics?” he asked, remembering that one Japanese ladies’ skater who had kept the lyrics last season. The singing had been rather distracting, and in his opinion, it had detracted from her performance.

“Sure,” his coach agreed. “In fact, I was hoping you would ask me to.”

On June 30, 2016, Yakov Feltsman announced that none of his skaters would compete in the Grand Prix series. On July 1, 2016, other Russian skaters around the world and in all four disciplines announced their refusal to compete at their assignments. On July 2, 2016, Japan’s ace, Katsuki Yuuri, confirmed that he would not skate in the Grand Prix either. He was joined by other top Japanese skaters. On July 3, 2016, Seung-Gil and Phichit assured their panicked federations of their intentions to compete.

“So this is really happening,” Phichit said contemplatively. He had insisted on regularly scheduled Skype calls under the pretense of keeping Seung-Gil updated on the happenings in the group chat. Seung-Gil saw it for what it was: the desire for face-to-face contact with someone who understood and sympathized with him. “They’re really not going to compete.”

_ This is going to hurt us _ , Seung-Gil didn’t say. Instead, he said, “I think this is just the beginning.”

“The beginning of what?”

“Something bigger than ourselves and a few gold medals.”

* * *

 

“Were you aware of your fellow skaters’ intentions not to compete in this season’s Grand Prix series this season before they made their announcements in July?”

“No, I was not,” he gritted out. The lie felt like sandpaper in his mouth.

“Did you ever consider doing the same?”

“No. Qualifying to the Grand Prix Final has always been a goal of mine, and after my disappointment at the Rostelecom Cup last year, I am more determined than ever to see it happen.”

“Otabek Altin has already qualified to the Final by winning both Skate America and Cup of China. How do you feel about him as a potential competitor?” Finally, a question actually related to skating.

“I was impressed by Otabek’s performances at both his events. I hope I get the chance to compete against him and see how we measure up against each other.”

Despite his elation at having won Trophee de France, the gold medal hung heavy around his neck. If he was honest with himself, the suppressor on his wrist didn’t feel too light either. While he certainly didn’t miss and didn’t want to see the red strings again, sometimes it just didn’t feel right. Winning without all his assigned competitors present certainly didn’t feel right.

He said as much to JJ, who had managed to make it to France to watch him compete and had insisted on taking him to dinner after the press conference. “Well, we’ll never really know,” the Canadian said. “But you did really well. You would’ve been tough competition to beat even if everyone was here. In fact, I’m gonna go out on a limb and say that you are the guy to beat this year.”

Seung-Gil snorted. “I think that title goes to Otabek Altin. I’ve watched videos of his performances, and even this early in the season he looks strong.”

“You’ve got to win NHK Trophy, then. So you can be on his level.” JJ grinned at him. “Also, I’ve never been to Marseille. I really want to go, and I won’t have an excuse to explore if you don’t qualify.”

“What about your siblings? Don’t you have any confidence in them?”

“Oh they’ll be fine. But if only they qualify I’ll have to stick with my family the whole time. I love my family, but there is such a thing as too much bonding time.”

“Ah, so I’m just an excuse for you to go sightseeing.”

“Exactly!” JJ’s laugh was loud and exuberant and lifted something off Seung-Gil’s chest. “Hey, I don’t think I asked you yet, but what’s your exhibition this year?”

“La vie en rose.”

“Ah, when in France, huh?”

“No, my coach chose it.”

“You know, that’s one of my fiancee’s-” Here JJ stopped and frowned, and when he resumed speaking his smile was tight and his voice bitter. “-well, she’s not my fiancee anymore, but it’s one of her favorite songs.”

Hope fluttered to life in Seung-Gil’s stomach. After a moment to let JJ wallow a little, he asked, “If you don’t mind me asking, what happened?” 

“We never had enough time for each other. I was always off on PPA business or at skating competitions, and she has a life of her own. Our schedules just stopped aligning.” The other man refused to make eye contact, instead fiddling with his napkin. While Seung-Gil knew that he should be sympathetic, he couldn’t help but feel that fate had finally given him a chance with his soulmate. He felt alight with hope, like he could walk on clouds without ever having to come back down to earth.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

“I’m sorry too.” JJ finally put the napkin down and looked back up at him. “That got really bitter really quickly.” The self-deprecating laugh that followed was quiet and a little sad, in sharp contrast to the one from a few minutes ago. “I’ll get over it.” Then he perked up. “Hey, the Eiffel Tower should still be open. You wanna go?”

“I’ve never been.”

“Let’s go then!”

The view from the top of the tower was amazing. Although it was already dark, the city glowed and sparkled with light. The enclosure was crowded with tourists and cameras all trying to get the perfect shot with their cameras, but Seung-Gil and JJ managed to make space for themselves directly in front of the fencing.

“This is beautiful,” he whispered. 

Even over the crowd, JJ was able to hear him. “It really is. It’s a once in a lifetime experience. Can’t get it anywhere else.”

Seung-Gil stared out into the darkness. Paris glowed beneath his feet and as far as the eye could see. Normally, he would have protested doing such a cliche, touristy activity, but he hadn’t found it in himself to reject JJ’s earnest enthusiasm. And now, ten thousand feet in the sky, he didn’t regret it one bit.

When they descended from the top of the tower, JJ turned to him with a mischievous look on his face and said, “I bet you can’t beat me down the stairs.”

“Down the stairs?” he repeated.

“There are staircases from ground level to the second level,” the other man explained, leading him to the opening of one such staircase. “I bet you can’t beat me down to ground floor.”

“Exactly how many stairs are there?” he asked, peering into the stairwell. Orange lights glowed back up at him.

“I guess you’ll have to find out,” JJ said. He winked and darted down the staircase.

“Hey!” Seung-Gil sprinted forward and down the steps in an attempt to catch up.  _ What a cheater _ , he thought, eyes on JJ’s dark jacket ahead of him. The stairs went on and on and on, silver metal steps that his shoes clanged against loudly. He dashed by a group of tourists descending at a much slower pace, another couple of very tired tourists climbing up, and was glad that they had taken the elevators to ascend.

Suddenly, JJ’s jacket disappeared from sight, and Seung-Gil sped up. There was a burst of cold air, and then he was emerging into the Paris night, breathing heavily.

“I win!” the other man crowed triumphantly. Seung-Gil was pleased to note that he was also breathing hard.

“You started before I did,” he accused. He felt a smile pushing its way onto his face. 

“It’s not my fault if I have a faster reaction time!” Seung-Gil gave up on controlling his facial muscles and just let himself smile large and wide. On seeing his face, JJ’s smile grew too, showing his perfect white teeth. “Come on, admit it! You know I won!”

“All right, you win,” he conceded, and JJ laughed. He threw his hands in the air and jumped up and down. Seung-Gil watched him with amusement and affection threatening to close up his throat. He could not deny that he was fond of JJ and his childish antics.

“I want a photo!” the Canadian exclaimed when he was done jumping around and attracting the judgment of Parisians and tourists alike. “This was a bet, so I want you to post a photo of us here at the Eiffel Tower!”

“This was a bet?”

“Yeah!” The other man whipped out his phone. “Come on, we can take it on my phone. I want to see more on your Instagram profile than just your dog, however cute she may be.” Seung-Gil couldn’t decide if he was supposed to take offense at that, and JJ took advantage of his confusion to push his phone on a poor passerby and force her to take a photo of the two of them. A camera flash later, and the woman gave JJ’s phone back to him. “Oh, this one’s nice.”

JJ was flashing his usual white, wide smile. Seung-Gil, while nowhere near as exuberant, was smiling unmistakably beside him. Their arms were looped together, and in the background the Eiffel Tower stretched into the sky, golden and beautiful. “I’ll send it to you,” he said, and sure enough, his phone beeped not two minutes later. “You better post that tomorrow.”

“I can post it right now,” Seung-Gil offered, opening Instagram. His feed, consisting of five pictures, greeted him. There were three photos of his dog, one photo of a sunset, and one photo of him grimacing during a photoshoot his federation had forced him into. JJ leaned over his shoulder as he tagged the location. “There. It’s posted. Are you happy now?”

“I am overwhelmed with happiness,” the other man said dramatically, draping one arm across his forehead. “I will never be as happy as I am right now. The honor of appearing on Seung-Gil Lee’s Instagram is just too much.”

“You should’ve been an actor. You’re certainly dramatic enough for it.”

The night ended with JJ dropping him off at the hotel and sweeping an over exaggerated bow that he claimed made him look chivalrous and gallant. As Seung-Gil entered the elevator, he thought about how nice a date their outing would have been if they were actually dating. But JJ had just broken up with his fiancee, and he was pretty sure the other man only considered them friends. Still, maybe one day, when JJ had moved on, Seung-Gil could ask to be more than friends without having to fear that he was a rebound.

There was just one problem with his plan. Never in his life had he tried to get close with someone. The friends he had had reached out to him, not the other way around. While he was now able to spend more than five minutes straight talking to someone, he continued to spend most of his time alone, and his interviews still showed it.

Maybe he should ask someone for advice? The idea was embarrassing but was probably his best option.

“Are you asking me how to flirt?” Phichit was obviously holding back laughter. His hand was placed strategically by his mouth, but Seung-Gil could see the smile he was trying to cover.

“I asked for tips on how to interact with someone you are romantically interested in.”

“You want to know how to flirt,” the Thai skater corrected, giggling. He leaned forward. “So. Is your soulmate available now?”

“...Yes,” he answered.

“Aww, Seung-Gil! I never would’ve pegged you for a romantic! This is so cute!”

“Are you going to help me or not?” he demanded.

“Of course I’ll help you! Don’t worry, the Phichit Chulanont Academy of Social Skills is here to help you out!”

“Great,” he deadpanned. “Do I get a refund if it doesn’t work out for me?”

* * *

“I want a refund,” Seung-Gil declared.

“What? Why?” Phichit exclaimed. “You haven’t even had the chance to try out your new and improved social skills in person yet!”

“My soulmate can’t make it to the NHK Trophy,” he said. Earlier in the day, JJ had texted him to say that he had PPA business and wouldn’t be able to attend the competition. Considering that Seung-Gil was already in Sapporo and hadn’t received any messages about JJ’s arrival or going out to dinner, he was not surprised. Over the last two weeks, Seung-Gil had actually responded to JJ’s texts, and they had texted more and more until JJ was sitting at the top of his messages app instead of Phichit or Sara.

“I’m not going to just let you give up. It’s only been two weeks! Besides, maybe he’ll be able to go to the Final. But you gotta give him a reason to go to the Final. Don’t let his absence get you down.”

“My performances will be fine,” he sniffed. You should worry about your own.”

“Hey, who’s the one actually qualified to the Final? I got second at Skate America and first at the Rostelecom Cup!” Seung-Gil chatted with the Thai skater for thirty more minutes, promising to greet the Crispinos and Ji Guang-Hong for him. While Michele had already finished competing in his GP assignments, this year Sara had been assigned to events separate from his. Her brother had accompanied her to them anyways. In fact, he was supposed to have dinner with the two of them tomorrow after the short program.

He frowned. While he liked the way that the tango was coming together, he was still struggling with his free skate. He just wasn’t connecting to the music the way it deserved, and his component scores from the Trophee de France showed it. Like “Almavivo”, “Tango de Roxanne” was enjoyable and even exhilarating to skate to. “A Journey” was its complete musical opposite: slow, quiet, settling into your bones while the tango rattled your eardrums. Flashy, loud, and intense he could do, but quiet and desperate was harder.

The next day, as he and the other skaters in Group 2 filed onto the ice for the six-minute warmup, the attendant holding the door open refused to let one of the skaters through. He was a young kid from Israel making his debut on the senior Grand Prix circuit, and he was very unhappy. “Why can’t I get on the ice?” he demanded.

“You don’t have your suppressor on,” the woman said calmly. So that was why she had asked Seung-Gil to show her his suppressor. He had thought it strange, because the ISU only required suppressors to be worn during judged performances, but he had rolled up the sleeve of his costume anyways and obliged her.

“But the ISU only requires us to wear it when we’re being judged!”

“I am not allowed to let you onto the ice until you are wearing a suppressor,” the woman said firmly. “I’m sorry, but those are the rules.”

“So they’re changing the rules on us,” Guang-Hong Ji said quietly from where he was standing by Seung-Gil’s side. “As if they hadn’t changed them enough on us already.”

He didn’t respond. If this was how the ISU was going to be, so be it. He would deal with it. They would all have to deal with it.

The whole business left him feeling powerless and distracted. He blamed that feeling for the mistakes he made in his short program. While he landed his quads just fine, he popped the triple toe loop that was supposed to be in combination with the quad toe loop. The intensity that he usually put into the ending step sequence just wasn’t there, and he knew that his component scores would be lower because of it.

His score after the short program was 85.71. It certainly wasn’t bad, and it definitely could have been worse, but it left him in 3rd place. Meanwhile, Guang-Hong Ji soared to first place. Seung-Gil wasn’t too worried, though. He could make up the difference in the free skate. Now, if only he could actually wrangle his performance to a satisfactory level.

“You’ll be fine,” Sara assured him that night over dinner. “Besides, it’s still early in the season. No one expects you to be perfect right off the bat. This is only the second time you’re performing this routine in competition. There are bound to still be some kinks in it.”

“Otabek Altin is already performing at a high level,” he pointed out. “And he was assigned to the first event in the series.”

“Otabek knows what works for him,” Michele said. “His programs this year are very similar to the ones he had last year. Your FS, on the other hand, is drastically different from what you’re used to skating to. You’re still going through that learning curve.”

“You know,” Seung-Gil said, “you give really good advice when you’re not focused on whether someone is asking Sara out.”

Michele spluttered and turned red. He really had gotten better about leaving Sara alone. He no longer glared at every man who came within five feet of his sister, and his music was no longer about his bordering-on-incestuous love for her. He still jumped the triple lutz-triple loop combination, but watching him do it was nice instead of creepy.

As they walked back to the hotel, the Crispinos drifted in front of him. Seung-Gil watched them banter wistfully, loneliness sitting in the pit of his stomach. He wished JJ had been able to come.

He looked up at the sky. It seemed awfully empty, but he wasn’t sure why he thought so.

The realization hit him like an oncoming train. The sky seemed empty because he couldn’t see the red strings of fate. He looked down at his hand and was irrationally disappointed when he didn’t see a string vanishing into the night. 

Even though he had worn his suppressor every day since receiving it, he hadn’t missed his power at all. He had been so convinced that his power was useless and he had hated it so much, but now he was here in Sapporo feeling dreadfully lonely and wishing that he could see those same strings again.

It occurred to him that he could easily see them again. When he got back to his hotel room, he stared down at his wrist. He both dreaded and was excited by the prospect of what he would see when he took it off. In one swift motion he practically ripped it off his wrist and watched his string reappear. It was silver, which meant JJ was at least five thousand miles across the world. He rose to his feet and practically ran to the hotel balcony.

The sight that greeted him was overwhelming. He forced his eyes shut, but the red strings branded themselves on the back of his eyelids. There were so many of them covering up the sky and obstructing the streets below and making their way through buildings.  _ Sapporo has a population of over a million people,  _ he reminded himself.  _ It is the fifth largest city in Japan. You should have expected this. _

He opened his eyes again. The sight was just as claustrophobic as he remembered, but at the same time it was comforting to see the connections between soulmates and even more comforting to see his own. It made him feel less alone.

Usually, Seung-Gil put on his suppressor before even leaving his hotel room. The next morning, however, he shoved it into the pocket of his jacket before heading down to breakfast.

He had forgotten how distracting the strings were. He missed the elevator the first time it arrived at his floor, attention diverted by the bright red strings connecting a husband and wife passing by to step on. When he finally made it down to breakfast, he stared at the mass of strings in front of him for a good few minutes before grabbing a plate and joining the buffet line.

Coach Park could tell that he was distracted, but she let him be and didn’t try to talk to him. He was grateful for it. He wouldn’t have been a good conversation partner anyways.

Just before he entered the arena, he pulled his suppressor out of his jacket pocket. His coach looked at him with disbelief written all over her face. “Usually you have that on before you come down to breakfast,” she commented, clearly expecting an answer. He only shrugged in response. When he put it on, the strings disappeared. The loneliness and unease returned, but this time around, Seung-Gil held onto those emotions rather than trying to push them away. They were perfect for his free skate.

He skated fourth in the last group. As the first strains of his music filtered through the speakers, he inhaled deeply and let himself feel the emotions that had been plaguing him for the entire competition. Usually, he tried not to let his emotions affect his skating. It could get messy very quickly. This time, however, they coursed through his veins, refining his movements and making him feel at one with the music.

The quadruple loop was perfect, and so was the triple toe loop that followed. The triple axel was slightly shaky but he landed it. The quad salchow was textbook, and as he launched himself into his spin sequence, he knew he was going to get a level 4 on it. He let the music wash over him, let it pull him down under the sea that he had imagined when he had first listened to the music.

Quad toe. Triple axel in combination with a double toe. He landed all of his jumps, and the routine ended faster than he expected. The music faded away, and he came back to himself in the middle of the rink to thunderous applause.

Coach Park was smiling when he skated over to her. “Excellent job, Seung-Gil. That was the best performance I’ve seen from you so far. I knew you could do it.”

When the scores came in, the stadium exploded in thunderous applause, but he could barely hear the audience over the sound of his heart in his ears and the joy singing through his body.  _ 196.31 _ . A personal best and a score that placed him in first with only two skaters left to go. He would definitely be standing on the podium at the end of this competition.

He ended up standing at the top of the podium. Ji Guang-Hong had faltered but had still done well enough to grab the silver, and another Japanese skater who had been picked by the Japanese skating federation got bronze.

Seung-Gil was going to the Grand Prix Final.

* * *

“It’s time for the traditional Grand Prix finalists dinner!” Phichit was standing outside his door with the Crispinos, Otabek Altin, Guang-Hong Ji, and Emil Nekola in tow. Seung-Gil blinked in the hope that they would disappear, but when he opened his eyes, they were all still there.

“Traditional? Since when?” he asked skeptically.

“Well, we all went to dinner last year, so I figured we could do it again this year!” Phichit chirped. While Otabek stared impassively at the ceiling, revealing nothing of his feelings about the other competitors or the “traditional” dinner, Guang-Hong fidgeted nervously. Seung-Gil knew the Chinese skater was pretty intimidated by him, and he had done nothing to change that. The Crispinos looked at him expectantly with Emil Nekola looming behind them, and he began to get the feeling that he was going out to dinner with them no matter what.

“I was supposed to meet someone else for dinner,” he said lamely. He was already losing this battle. 

Immediately, Phichit started winking at him. “A  _ special _ someone?” the Thai skater asked with a raise of his eyebrows. Sara snickered into her hand. “Why not just bring them along?”

“Fine,” he grumbled. He texted JJ about the change to their plans, grabbed his coat, and let himself be buoyed along by Phichit’s endless energy. 

Luckily, JJ had been able to make it to the Final. They had both kept up their ends of a promise made at the Boston airport back in April. Seung-Gil had hoped to replicate the magic of their outing after Trophee de France, but that plan had down gone the drain the instant Phichit had showed up outside his hotel room. However, a group outing could end up being the better option. It was less awkward, and there would be less pressure to carry a conversation.

JJ was waiting for them at the door of the restaurant, legs crossed casually and shoulder pressed against the wall. “Is that position even comfortable?” Seung-Gil asked as soon as he was in earshot.

“Nice to see you too,” the other man said. In the background behind him, Seung-Gil heard whispering, a slap, and more whispering, but he ignored it. JJ peered around him. “Hey, are these the other finalists? Hi, Sara! Hi, Michele!” Then his eyes lit up. “Otabek! It’s so good to see you!”

Everyone turned to face the stoic Kazakh in surprise. Otabek only said, “Likewise,” his facial expression entirely unchanged.

“Man, I haven’t seen you in years!” JJ pushed himself off the wall and towards Otabek. “How long has it been? Five years?”

“Five years.” As JJ and Otabek continued chatting, Seung-Gil filed into the restaurant after Michele and Emil. Sara and Phichit appeared at his elbows. “Isn’t that the guy from your Instagram post by the Eiffel Tower?” the latter asked, the very same post pulled up on his phone. “Is this the guy you enrolled at the Phichit Chulanont Academy of Social Skills for?” 

“Yes,” he mumbled, so quietly that he could barely hear himself. Phichit squealed in his ear. “Stop that. You’ll break my eardrums.”

“He’s cute,” Sara said. She was wearing a smile that was even more devilish to look at than the one Ji Guang-Hong wore when he challenged unsuspecting innocents to a game of darts. “I approve. He’s trustworthy, has a nice smile, dresses well…”

“Unlike our favorite parrot here,” Phichit added.

“I liked my costume for ‘Almavivo’,” he protested.

“It was voted ‘Worst Costume of the Year’ on Twitter by a margin of twenty percent.” Seung-Gil was forcefully pushed down into the seat across from JJ, and Sara and Phichit seated themselves on either side of him. He looked up at JJ very briefly, found himself unable to make eye contact, and glanced back down at his lap. He wished that he wasn’t wearing his suppressor. Having reassurance that he and JJ were connected by more than their words would have been nice. After the day of the free skate at the NHK Trophy, he hadn’t left his room without his suppressor on again. He hadn’t yet decided if the absence of the strings let him breathe or made him uneasy.

“Yeah,” JJ was saying, “Otabek and I trained together at a Canadian PPA facility for a few years. We were the only kids who were splitting our time between skating and training, so we saw each other all the time.” The Kazakh skater nodded seriously next to him. “Eventually we had to make a choice between the two, though, because you can’t be in two places at once. Obviously I chose the PPA and he chose skating, and that was when we parted ways. I think we made the right choices.”

“So… does that mean you’re powered, Otabek?” Emil Nekola asked curiously. Otabek nodded and pulled the vase in the middle of the table towards himself. He touched the closed red rosebud, and in the space of a few seconds it had opened fully and turned into a lovely, bright orange.

“Wow, that’s beautiful,” Sara breathed reverently.

“Thank you,” Otabek said. That was the first time Seung-Gil had ever heard him speak outside of interviews. Somehow the other skater managed to speak even less than he did. “My power,” he continued, “is the ability to control plant life. For example, I can make plants grow faster. I can leave them in eternal bloom or make them wilt before they should. I can make a forest out of a desert and vice versa.”

“That’s so cool!” Emil exclaimed. “So if you weren’t a figure skater, you would be a PPA agent?” When Otabek nodded, he pointed to JJ. “And if you weren’t a PPA agent, you would be a figure skater, right?”

“That’s right,” JJ confirmed.

“Okay, I have a question for the rest of you, then. What do you think you would be doing if you weren’t skating?”

“Something with social media!” Phichit answered immediately. “I’d love to run my own Youtube channel!”

“I used to play the violin,” Sara offered. “Maybe I’d be a professional musician.”

“I like to cook,” Michele admitted, surprising everyone but his sister. Seung-Gil immediately imagined him puttering around a bright, well-lit kitchen like the ones on cooking shows while he babbled on about flavor combinations and childhood stories to a camera. “I think I would’ve gone to culinary school.”

“I’d be a scientist,” Emil said cheerfully. Now that Seung-Gil could easily see. “I’m really into AI.”

“We know,” Michele muttered. “Your routines last year were all about you becoming a robot.”

“My father wanted to me to go to business school in America,” Guang-Hong said thoughtfully. “I think I would be a businessman.”

Everyone looked expectantly at Seung-Gil. He had never bothered to think about that before. He had never had to, but as the years passed by, the inevitability of retirement crept up on him along with the reality of military conscription. Eventually, when he could no longer skate and was finished with his military service, he would need another occupation. He considered the possibilities. “I like math,” he said eventually. “I would probably be an accountant.”

Everyone stared judgmentally at him and Guang-Hong. “Okay…” Emil said after a few moments. “But what would you guys  _ want  _ to be? Not whatever is most realistic or what you’re expected to do. Tell us your wildest dreams.”

Guang-Hong thought about it. “Oh, I know!” he exclaimed brightly. “I’d be a firefighter!”

“He is so cute,” Sara murmured. “I just want to put him in my pocket and keep him forever!”

“What about you, Seung-Gil?” Emil inquired. “What’s your wildest dream?”

“I’m living it,” he answered flatly. With that, he managed to efficiently deflate the conversation until the food arrived, at which point it naturally built back up again with significant contributions from Phichit and JJ. The latter fit right in with everyone else. He teased Guang-Hong, prodded Otabek into talking, laughed at Emil’s bad jokes, and managed to engage Sara without provoking Michele’s overprotective instincts. For his part, Seung-Gil watched the way the candlelight illuminated JJ’s eyes and let the voices of the other skaters wash over him. He was wasting all of Phichit’s training, but he couldn’t find any words that were worth saying.

After two very enjoyable hours, they began to make their way back to the hotel. Naturally, Seung-Gil drifted to the back of the pack, content to watch everyone interact with each other. He was pleasantly surprised when JJ fell back to join him. The corners of his mouth twitched upwards in the beginnings of a smile as he turned to face him, but the other man wasn’t smiling.

“Do you wear that suppressor all the time?” JJ asked tightly. He was looking straight ahead instead of making eye contact.

“What’s it to you?” It came out defensive and a little angry. He might have replied differently, but JJ’s tone made him feel like he was being accused of something.

Instead of answering, JJ asked another question. “Why don’t you care about the cause?”

“The cause? What cause?”

“The cause of people like us!” JJ hissed. Finally he looked over at Seung-Gil, but his gaze was frustrated and full of irritation. “Of powered persons. You could be doing something, but you just let everyone else walk over you. The ISU, the people who protest us and our existence. You just accept it.”

“I don’t-” He felt himself clamming up. His face was stiff and immovable. “What am I supposed to be doing?”

“Not wearing that suppressor all the time. It just gives the people who hate us proof that we’re okay with cutting out that part of ourselves to please them! Or, I don’t know, making some sort of statement in the media or through your performances or something. You have a platform and you just sit there doing nothing!”  
JJ’s words were like swords hacking at his bones. Seung-Gil didn’t say anything, just let the words float between them. That wasn’t the response the other man wanted, though. “See, you’re doing it right now.”

“Doing what?”

“Letting me walk over you like the ISU keeps walking over you! Not standing up for yourself!” Something seemed to occur to him. “Did you even- do you even know that there’s a name for the pro- and anti-powered persons movements now?”

“I’m not on social media much,” he mumbled.

“You don’t need to be on social media to know these things!” JJ ran his hands through his hair. “Nobody’s asking you to ditch the Final or blatantly disobey the ISU.”

“Then what are you asking me to do? Because that’s what you seem to be suggesting.”

JJ stopped walking and turned to face him fully. Seung-Gil was reminded of a night in Barcelona a year ago, when they barely knew each other and he hadn’t been interested in getting to know anyone, really. So much had changed since then. “I know you don’t care about anything, but I’m asking you to care about this because it affects you too.” JJ grabbed the wrist with the suppressor around it. “I’m asking you to take off this manacle sometimes.”

“How can you ask me that when you know what I see when I take it off?” Seung-Gil demanded. Anger rushed through his veins, buoying him up in a bad way and encouraging him to say things he knew he would regret later. “You’ve never had to see the world the way I saw it for twenty years. You don’t know what it feels like to have the sky closed off to you. What it’s like to know whom everyone is destined to end up with and to know the fates of their relationships. To wait for your soulmate to come along because you could never be with anyone else knowing that there’s someone who matches the both of you better out there. You don’t know what it’s like to have the hopes and dreams of a country resting on your shoulders or the knowledge that if you deviate from the status quo even just a little that you’re not going to get any support and your dreams will crumble into the dust. How it feels to do something you love but have to sacrifice a part of yourself to do it. You get to use the part of yourself that I have to pretend I don’t have in your work every day. You have the might and protection of the PPA. You-” Abruptly, he choked on his next words, and it was only then that he realized that he was screaming and his eyes were burning. JJ was looking at him with a horrified expression, mirrored on the faces of the other skaters. He scrubbed roughly at his face, willing the tears not to spill over, and pushed through everyone to enter the hotel.

“Seung-Gil,” Sara called anxiously.

“Wait up!” Phichit yelled. “Wait for me!”

He ignored them and entered the elevator alone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> \- yikes sorry for not updating earlier. I just have to edit the final chapter and then we'll be good to go, so that should be up sometime this week!  
> \- "A Journey" (Seung-Gil's free skate music) is composed by Eric Radford for Patrick Chan's 2016-17 free skate, which got me into figure skating! You can watch his performance from the 2017 World Championships here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DbTdqjETpng&t=312s  
> \- American ice dancers Rachel Parsons and Michael Parsons (siblings) used "Singing in the Rain" (JJ's siblings' FS music) as their free dance music for the 2016-17 season. You can watch their performance at the 2017 Junior World Championships here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RFr1H-_AAFU&t=82s  
> \- "Tango de Roxanne" is from Moulin Rouge. A lot, a lot, a lot of skaters have used it, including Yuna Kim, Evgeny Plushenko, and Karen Chen. The Japanese skater Seung-Gil refers to is Kanako Murakami. You can watch her performance from 2016 Four Continents here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qc6ok8V_elc


	4. misfortune cannot dim my homeland's luster

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Grand Prix Final. Seung-Gil makes some statements.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> “No, in spite of everything, first my country, first the Philippines, daughter of Spain, first the Spanish homeland! No, misfortune cannot dim my homeland’s luster!”

The first thing Seung-Gil did after he sat down on his hotel bed was look up the names of the movements. The proponents and supporters of regulating powered persons had been named “shields”, and those against it “eagles”. Both images were overly simplistic and fairly inaccurate.

The second thing he did was play “One Day I’ll Fly Away” from the  _ Moulin Rouge  _ soundtrack. He could make a statement with strong, flawless performances, but he had done that during his GP assignments, and obviously JJ didn’t think that had been enough. He needed something else, something that would make his feelings on the “cause” crystal clear. JJ could accuse him of not caring, but that wasn’t true. The truth was, he was a selfish human being, and he cared more about himself and his career.

A knock on his door brought him out of his daze. He had set the music on loop and was acting out choreography, visualizing the rink, audience, and cameras. He only had three days to prepare a whole new exhibition piece, and he needed all the time he could get. He did not appreciate the disruption.

Seung-Gil opened the door, saw JJ on the other side, hissed “I’m making my statement. Leave me alone!”, and slammed the door closed. It rattled on its hinges. His slam must have been more forceful than he intended.

Just as he settled back into choreographing his movements with the music, there was another knock on the door. When he pulled it open impatiently, JJ was still standing on the other side. “What will it take for you to leave?” he demanded.

“Can I come in?” JJ asked.

“Will you leave if I say yes?’

“Eventually, yes.” 

Seung-Gil gave up and let him in. Nicole Kidman was still wailing away on his computer, so he turned it off before facing the other man. 

“What do you want?”

“I want to apologize.” JJ’s eyes were soft and blue, a far cry from the flinty gray that had stared him down earlier. “I didn’t mean any of that.”

Seung-Gil rolled his eyes even as tears threatened to spill over. “Of course you meant all of it,” he spat, incapable of acting anything but angry even though he felt no anger. “Why would you say it if you didn’t mean it?”

“There’s a lot going on right now. I’m really stressed and I took it out on you. The PPA-” Here JJ paused, considering his words. “The UN wants to dissolve the PPA even though there’s still a huge need for our work worldwide. The board has asked me to testify for the agency but my handler has also been asking me to go on missions at the same time. It’s just hard for me to balance. I’ve been really snappish lately, and I forgot that figure skating is one of the hottest points of conflict right now. I wanted a break from this whole thing, but then I saw your suppressor and I remembered, hey! I’m a powered PPA agent! Just by the nature of my work, I can’t get a break. I’m fighting for my job and my lifestyle right now. I hope you can understand that.”

Seung-Gil really wanted to make a comment about how it might be better for everyone that the PPA be dissolved but managed to restrain himself. “Okay,” he said, surprising JJ.

“Okay? That’s it?” So that hadn’t been the right reaction.

“I didn’t need a justification but you insisted on giving me one anyways. I have things to do. Will you leave now?”

“Do you forgive me?”

What kind of question was that? Seung-Gil had forgiven him before he had shown up to his room. Besides, JJ hadn’t been wrong. Maybe he should stand up for himself. “Of course I forgive you,” he muttered, pushing the Canadian out the door. “I only have three friends. If I didn’t forgive you I’d only have two.” He closed the door on JJ’s shocked face.

“Finally some peace,” Seung-Gil said to the empty room. He strode over to his computer, turned it on, and danced to the sound of Nicole Kidman’s voice until the clock told him it was past 1 AM and he was too tired to move anymore.

He proposed his idea to Coach Park over breakfast the next morning. “I’m going to do it whether you approve or not,” he said, “but I would like your approval.”

She frowned at him, taking in his dark eyebags and disheveled hair. “This is a bad idea,” she told him bluntly. She coach didn’t elaborate, but he knew what she was thinking. She thought it too blatant and political a statement. Too big a risk. But she had been working with him for five years. She knew how stubborn he was when he got an idea into his head, and this idea was one he refused to let go of. “How much sleep did you get?” she asked instead.

“Not enough,” he answered quietly. Her disappointed gaze burned through his skin. Nevertheless, his practice that day went well. He landed most of his jumps, avoided the other skaters’ attempts to speak to him, and hummed along to the tango when it was his turn to practice with his music. At the end of the practice session, he was in a fairly decent mood. When Phichit tried to approach him as he skated off the ice, he let it happen.

“Yuuri’s not coming,” the other skater said sadly, looking at his phone with a miserable expression.

“Katsuki Yuuri?” Seung-Gil asked to clarify.

“Yeah. I asked him to come watch me and he said something about not endorsing the Grand Prix series that sounded like it came out of Yakov Feltsman’s mouth,” Phichit sighed. “I was really hoping he would come. Everything is so political now.”

“It’s always been political, I think,” he replied. “I think the difference now is that we’re the ones being affected. Everyone else is off doing big things, and we’re left behind to fill their void in skating.”

“You make it sound like they’re never coming back.”

“In a way, they can’t come back. The ISU and the- shields, is it?- will remember them as the skaters who ditched the Grand Prix series. It won’t be the same.”

“It hasn’t been the same since they required us to register.”

“No, it hasn’t been,” he agreed.

The crowd of protesters around the hotel was unusually large and rowdy when Seung-Gil and his coach returned. In Paris it had been large too, but considering the sizes proportionally, this one was larger. He and Coach Park pushed through with yelling and insults bombarding them on both sides. Fortunately, they made it through with no harm done.

“They’re very pushy today,” he commented.

“There’s an international summit of powered lawmakers testifying today before the UN,” Coach Park said. “I was reading about it during your practice. It’s part of the ongoing UN investigation into whether or not they should keep the PPA.”

“Is that really worth all this?” He swept his hand towards the doors of the hotel to indicate the giant crowd.

“The summit is also addressing the treatment of powered persons in employment, including professional sports.”

“I don’t understand,” he said. “Why do they have an issue with that discussion?”

“They dislike the implication that their treatment of powered persons right now is wrong. Which it is, Seung-Gil. I know we don’t talk about anything political, but it is wrong.” Coach Park didn’t say anything else, but in that moment, Seung-Gil knew he had her approval to change his exhibition skate.

* * *

“You can do this. You can do this,” Coach Park repeated emphatically. Seung-Gil’s heart thudded in his ears as he stared down at the ice. He had never been so nervous before. With one final deep inhale, he pushed off the rink barrier and skated to the middle of the rink. Adrenaline coursed through his veins as he got into his starting pose, right arm outstretched and his left elbow pointing to the sky with his hand hanging by his face.  _ I can do this _ , he reassured himself. Unbidden, JJ saying “I believe in you” came to mind. Instead of tamping the sudden swell of affection in his chest down, he held onto it.

The music started, and he reached down towards his feet and back up to the roof. First the quad loop, solid as always. Flying camel spin into a catchfoot spin. Adrenaline and emotion carried him forward into a combination spin- another camel, then donut, and then he crouched down into a sit spin with one arm extended into the air. His next jumps were a combination he had struggled to jump cleanly at his previous two competitions.  _ I’m going to make it this time, _ he thought determinedly, and jumped.

The crowd roared around him as he landed the quad toe and then the triple toe without hesitation. Triple axel. Another combination spin, pancake into A into scratch spin this time. Only the step sequence was left. Even though he was skating to a version of the song without the lyrics, he could hear the screaming of “Roxanne! Roxanne!” in his head. He mouthed along with where the lyrics would have been, knowing full well that when he watched videos of his performance later it would look very strange. 

He felt the music coming to a finish. It didn’t so much end as come to an abrupt stop, and Seung-Gil thrust his arms wide open. He was breathing very, very hard, but adrenaline and now exhilaration were propping him up. He pumped his fist in the air triumphantly as a wide smile broke out over his face. This had to be a personal best.

“The scores, please,” the announcer said over the PA. A beat, then, “The score for Seung-Gil Lee for the short program is 103.12. He is currently in first place.” He had crushed his previous best for the short program by six points.

“I’m so proud of you,” Coach Park said with a smile as wide as his. “I knew you could do it.”

_ Did you see that, JJ? _ he wondered as he waved to the still-screaming audience.  _ You better be watching, because that’s only the first of many statements I’m going to make at this competition. _

As the second highest qualifier to the Final, Seung-Gil had skated fifth. Otabek was the last to skate, and though he performed respectably, his final score was only 97.04. This left Seung-Gil in first place when the short programs finished. It was a nice advantage to have going into a free skate that could either go well like at NHK Trophy or be average, like at Trophee de France.

When he returned to the hotel, he went back to working on his exhibition piece in his room. He shoved his bed to one end of the room to give himself as much space as possible, but before he could even turn on his computer, someone knocked on the door. “What is it now?” he grumbled.

Phichit burst into his room, somehow managing to fit through the tiny space Seung-Gil had opened up between the door and the frame. “Have you seen this?” he demanded. He was waving his phone around like a madman.

“Probably not,” Seung-Gil answered.

“‘Two skaters, one statement’,” Phichit read from his screen dramatically. “‘Viktor Nikiforov testifies before the UN while Seung-Gil Lee blows away audience in Marseille’. Should I go on?” He looked at Seung-Gil with eagerness all over his face, so Seung-Gil just nodded and resigned himself to at least thirty minutes of listening to Phichit dither on.

“Today was the first day of the Grand Prix Final performances in Marseille, France,” Phichit continued. “The top four to six competitors in the four disciplines of figure skating compete in the GPF annually. But something was very different about this year’s Grand Prix series, which determines who goes to the Final. This year, skaters from two top countries, Russia and Japan, opted not to participate in these competitions as an act of protest against the International Skating Union’s regulations on powered skaters. The ISU, the governing body of figure skating, required powered skaters to register with the Powered Persons Database in May and to wear suppressors during their performances starting with the 2016-17 season.”

“Can you get to the relevant part?”

“I’m getting there! Be patient.” Without Seung-Gil’s invitation, Phichit seated himself on his bed. “These rules have been wildly unpopular from the start, sparking international protest. Viktor Nikiforov of Russia, five-time world champion and Olympic champion of men’s singles skating, has been the major figurehead of the protests against the ISU. Nikiforov was one of the first to declare his refusal to participate in the Grand Prix series, and today he testified in front of the UN as part of the summit on the treatment of powered persons in professional settings. 

“Almost simultaneously in Marseille, Seung-Gil Lee of South Korea took the lead in the men’s field with a personal best score in the short program of 103.12 points. Lee is among the powered skaters who participated in the Grand Prix series despite the new ISU rules. His performances this year have proved that powered skaters are just as competitive with suppressors on.” Phichit finally finished reading and grinned up at him. “Well, what about that? Wasn’t that great?”

“I suppose,” Seung-Gil answered. “Will you leave now? I’m trying to work on something.”

“Is that why the bed is over here by the wall instead of in the middle of the room?” He hauled Phichit to his feet and pushed him out the door, not deigning to answer. He had better things to do.

Seung-Gil was a few minutes late to the practice session for the free skate the next day, so when he saw Ji Guang-Hong arguing with the rink attendant while the other skaters pretended not to watch and his coach was nowhere in sight, he was confused. When he approached, the rink attendant asked him, “Can I see your suppressor?” 

He held up his wrist. The attendant nodded and opened the door to the rink for him, but before he entered Seung-Gil turned to Guang-Hong. “What’s going on?”

The Chinese skater had tears on his eyes, looking years younger than his actual age of eighteen. “I forgot my suppressor at the hotel,” he explained, on the verge of tears. “My coach went back to get it, but until then I’m just burning time.”

Seung-Gil turned to the rink attendant. “When did it become required to wear a suppressor to practice sessions?” he asked. He distinctly remembered Phichit and Michele coming to the practice session for the short program without their suppressors and still being able to go on the ice. In fact, none of them had been asked for their suppressors that day.

“This has been standard practice for the entire competition,” the attendant answered.

“No, it hasn’t.”

  
“Yes, it has, sir.”

  
He could see that arguing would be pointless. Guang-Hong would not be able to skate until he got a suppressor. After a moment’s consideration, he took off his own and handed it to the younger skater. The world around him exploded into red, but he only had eyes for the surprise and relief in Guang-Hong’s expression.

“Thank you so much!” the other skater squealed, jumping forward and hugging him briefly before practically running onto the ice.

“Mr. Lee, I’m sorry, but you can’t be on the ice without a suppressor,” the attendant said apologetically. Seung-Gil backed away from the rink entrance, focused more on the way strings extended from the audience and into the ceiling of the arena rather than the attendant’s words. Seeing them again wasn’t as overwhelming as it had been during the NHK Trophy. Instead, it was like seeing an old friend you hadn’t seen or talked to in years but still remembered fondly. 

“That’s all right,” he said distantly.

After ten minutes, Guang-Hong’s coach showed up with his suppressor. Seung-Gil was finally able to get on the ice, but he did feel some regret when he put his suppressor on and the strings disappeared. Was this what JJ had meant when he compared the suppressor to a manacle?  
“What you did earlier was very kind,” Coach Park told him after practice.

He shrugged. “Guang-Hong is the nicest of all of us,” he said. “It was unfair to deny him practice time when they changed the rules again without letting any of us know. Besides, what harm would he have done with his power? Perfect aim is useless when you have neither a reason or a place to aim at.”

She sighed. “It’s not right, what they’re doing to all of you.” Her phone dinged and she glanced down at it. When she looked back up at him, the expression on her face was shocked, sad, and afraid.

“What is it?” he asked.

“A powered girl in Paris was killed today during the protests against the UN summit. The news says she was murdered just for being powered.”

Seung-Gil froze. Something clanged on the ground, startling him, and he realized it was the metal water bottle he had been holding only a few seconds ago. He bent down to pick it up. Though he had been sweaty from practice, his insides felt cold. “What was her name?” he asked. He wasn’t sure if he wanted to know the answer. To put a name to the nameless person he already identified with, even though he had never known her and would never know her.

“Emma Bernard,” Coach Park said quietly. “She was seventeen.”  
“What was a seventeen-year-old doing at the protests?” he demanded. Seventeen-year-old Lee Seung-Gil would not have joined a protest. Seventeen-year-old him would have been training at the rink or studying. At seventeen he had won his country’s national championship once and had only won two medals on the international junior circuit, but he had had hopes and dreams that extended far into the nebulous future. Emma Bernard must have had hopes and dreams too, but now she would never see them come true.

“She was just in the wrong place at the wrong time.”  
_That could have been me,_ he thought numbly. _That could still be me._

The prospect terrified him.

* * *

The first text Seung-Gil received from JJ after three days of silence read,  _ How are you? _

_ I’m fine _ , he typed. That was a lie. He was not fine. His mind was in complete disarray. There was a pit of unease roiling in his stomach and threatening to spread through the rest of his body. He was afraid of what might happen to him if he said anything or stepped even slightly outside the lines. While he was determined to see his new exhibition skate through, the idea had soured on him a bit as rationality and reason returned. He had felt strong and invincible before, but now the possible consequences hit him just as hard as they had the day the ISU had required him to register with the PPD.

His phone beeped again.  _ Well, I’m not fine. _ Then, a few seconds later, but with a long enough pause in between that he figured JJ had hesitated to send it:  _ Can we talk? _

_ Where do you want to talk?  _ he sent back.  _ I don’t want to leave the hotel right now. The crowd outside is getting chaotic. _

_ I’m sharing a room with my parents on the second floor. I’ll come to you.  _ The bubble indicating that JJ was texting disappeared. Seung-Gil guessed that he was on his way, and was proven right when the person knocking on his door several minutes later turned out to be JJ.

He opened the door wide. “Come in.” The other man entered, hands tucked into his pockets and gaze fixed on the floor. He stopped in the middle of the hotel room, where Seung-Gil’s bed would have been if he hadn’t pushed it to the side, and his gaze slowly moved from the floor to the ceiling. An eternity of silence passed between them.

“Did you hear about Emma Bernard?” JJ asked.

“Yes.”  
The quiet stretched between them, heavy with all the words they wanted to say but that they didn’t have the courage to.

“When I was seventeen, I had never been outside Canada,” JJ said suddenly. “Now I’m twenty and I’ve been on 15 missions and countless figure skating competitions that were out of the country.”

“When I was seventeen,” Seung-Gil offered, “I could barely speak any English. Now I use it every day.”

“I was seventeen when I met Isabella.” JJ glanced over at him with a sad smile. “My, um, my ex-fiancee.”

“I was seventeen when-” Seung-Gil hesitated before forcing himself to continue. “-when I realized I wasn’t interested in women.”

The other man nodded at him with a look on his face expressing acceptance and gratitude for sharing something so personal about himself. Relief blossomed in Seung-Gil’s chest. 

“When I was seventeen,” JJ said, turning to face him fully and making eye contact now, “I was trying to watch Otabek’s free skate and I accidentally clicked on the wrong link and got directed to some skater I had never watched before. But I figured I’d watch the video anyways. And I really, really liked his skating. When it was over, I went through Youtube and watched all the videos I could find of him.”

_ Who are you talking about? _ Seung-Gil wanted to ask, but JJ continued talking without pause. He decided to just listen. The other man would get to it in due time. “I became a big fan of his. I watched all his interviews and routines I could find. Then last year the PPA assigned me to the Rostelecom Cup, where he was competing, to talk to Yuuri Katsuki. I had the opportunity to talk to him, but instead of telling him how much I enjoyed the mambo he was skating that season, I provoked his fear of the agency I worked for.”

Seung-Gil’s mouth worked soundlessly, trying to find words to say, but he couldn’t come up with any. He had not expected this. Eventually, he said, “Are you trying to tell me that you’ve been my fan for three years?”  
JJ’s following laugh was more surprised than amused. “I guess I am,” he answered.

“Why now?” he asked. His heart was beating dangerously fast. He felt as though someone had punched him in the chest and knocked all the wind out of him.  _ That’s what we call emotion _ , Phichit said pointedly in the back of his mind.

“I’ve realized that I’m not invincible. I’m an S-class PPA agent. The agency uses me for high-risk situations. I’ve been on missions where people have threatened to kill me to my face. It’s never really sunk in that I could die without the chance to tell people what I want them to know until now.”

Seung-Gil nodded. He couldn’t look at JJ anymore, so he fixed his gaze on the floor instead.  _ Should I tell him? _ he wondered. If possible, his heart beat faster. The knowledge that JJ was his soulmate had sat on him for over a year now. He hadn’t done anything about it. There was a very real possibility that if he said nothing now, he might never get to. The world hated powered persons enough to kill them. What prevented him from being next?

All his life he had lived in his comfort zone, never daring, never trying, too afraid to take a leap of faith. He was already reaching out of the safe zone with his skating. Maybe it was time to do the same with his personal life.

“I-” he got out, then had to stop. “I- you’re-” JJ waited for him to continue speaking patiently. “You’re my soulmate,” he said, far too quickly and too softly for his own liking.

JJ blinked. A wave of emotions passed over his face, and then it settled into a blank slate. Seung-Gil waited for his response with bated breath. It was so silent you could have heard a pin drop. “Have you known this since we met at the Rostelecom Cup?”  
He nodded slowly. The other man’s face flickered, and then JJ started laughing. Seung-Gil gaped. He wasn’t sure if he should be offended or relieved by this response. “You really know how to one-up a guy, huh?” As he continued laughing, Seung-Gil’s heart sank.

“If you’re just going to laugh at me,” he said miserably, “you can leave.”

JJ turned from amused to alarmed in an instant. “No no no no no,” he said frantically, grabbing for Seung-Gil’s hands. He stepped out of the other man’s reach. “I’m not laughing at you. It’s just- my celebrity crush is my soulmate? I couldn’t believe that I got the chance to talk to you last year, or that I got your phone number and you told me I could text you whenever I wanted. I went to the top of the Eiffel Tower with you and beat you on the way back down. Who gets to do that with their family, much less the person they’ve been watching from afar for three years? I never thought I’d get to know you, and now you’re telling me we’re soulmates? I can’t believe it.” He moved closer, and Seung-Gil let it happen. The distance between them decreased until there was barely a foot separating their faces. JJ’s eyes flicked down to his lips, and he leaned in slowly.

Seung-Gil pushed him away. “I’m not ready for that,” he said. “Please don’t be offended.”

JJ looked at him, considering. “We can take it slow,” he offered. “I’m willing to wait for you.” He sat down on Seung-Gil’s bed and picked up the conversation from where it had been before it derailed. “When I was seventeen,” he said, crossing his arms over his chest, “I got into a fight with one of the other kids I trained with when the Blackhawks beat the Bruins in the Stanley Cup Finals.” At Seung-Gil’s confused expression, he elaborated, “Hockey.”

“Oh,” he said. “When I was seventeen, I went to my first baseball game.”  
They went on like that, trading stories about their seventeen-year-old selves, for several minutes until JJ looked at his watch and cursed. He got up from the bed. “Seung-Gil, I’m sorry, but I promised my family I’d go out with them for dinner tonight.”

“It’s fine,” he said. They drifted over to his hotel room door. “It was nice talking to you.”

JJ smiled at him. “I’m glad we got to talk.” He squeezed Seung-Gil’s hand between his own. “Good luck in the free skate, yeah?”

“I’ll do my best.”

“That’s all anyone can ask for, right?” With another smile, his soulmate turned and disappeared down the hall. 

* * *

“Representing the Republic of Korea, Seung-Gil Lee!” The crowd exploded in sound as he skated to the middle of the rink.  _ It’s time to make another statement _ , he told himself.  _ You’re poised to win this. You can win this.  _ That morning he had woken up with the weight of Emma Bernard and the expectations of his country sitting on his chest, but he was determined not to let them drag him down. Out here on the ice, it was only him and the music. He looked down at his skates and waited for it to begin.

Seung-Gil moved with the first notes of the piano. He wanted the audience to see what he saw, to feel what he felt. The desperation with which he had rushed to his local PPA branch when the ISU had required to register. 

_ Quad loop-triple toe loop _ . Katsuki Yuuri falling on his quad flip during Four Continents.  _ Triple axel. Quad salchow. _ Loneliness at the NHK Trophy. A glimmer of hope emerging whenever he removed his suppressor instead of self-hatred.  _ Camel spin. Upright spin.  _ He moved through the choreographic sequence, remembering the frustration on JJ’s face as he demanded to know why Seung-Gil wasn’t doing anything. 

_ Quad toe. Triple axel, double toe. _ The frustration of having to deal with all of the ISU rule changes that no one was notified of beforehand.  _ Triple loop _ . The music filled his bones, lifted him up and dragged him down, but he would fly.  _ Triple lutz-double toe-double loop. _ The combination was clean, unlike the mess his life had become. The last jump was a triple flip, which he made easily. He thought about the numbness in his bones when Coach Park had told him Emma Bernard was only seventeen.  _ Flying sit spin. Upright spin.  _

The step sequence felt like he was moving through a pit of molasses, but it felt right. It didn’t feel slow and awkward like it had at the Trophee de France and NHK Trophy, but natural. Finally, he remembered his resignation to just deal with everything. Blindly accepting all the changes and the hatred and the sacrifices.  _ Camel spin. Flying sit spin. _ When he finished the scratch spin, he twirled once more, then looked down at his feet to mirror the same pose he had used in the beginning.

During his routine, he had felt alone on the rink with the ice stretching for what seemed like miles around him and the crowd tuned out by his singular focus. But when he came back to himself, Seung-Gil realized the audience was giving him a standing ovation. As he bowed and made his way off the ice, he noticed that he didn’t feel the removal of the pressure on his chest. Emma Bernard and Pyeongchang were still with him, weighing down his shoulders. One performance, no matter how good it was, couldn’t fix everything. He suddenly understood why Viktor Nikiforov and Katsuki Yuuri hadn’t participated in this year’s GP series. They needed Nikiforov’s UN statement and Plisetsky’s refusal to participate, but they also needed him to prove that powered skaters could compete just as well even with suppressors and regulations.

Seung-Gil just felt hollow. His performance had taken a lot out of him, and he was barely able to muster up a smile when the scores were announced. He had won the Grand Prix Final with a total score of 307.46, blowing the rest of the field away. Pleasure and happiness were sitting in his stomach. By the time the medal ceremony rolled around, it had swelled enough that he was able to crack the barest beginnings of a smile for the camera, which he had never done before in his career. He knew that the official photo of the men’s medalists would drive the media mad, as none of them were smiling. Otabek was stoic as usual on his left, and Michele, whose free skate had been uninspired but cleaner than Phichit’s, had his mouth set in a tight line on his right. The medalists in the other disciplines had been full of bright smiles and overwhelming joy, but the men’s field, depleted of its legends, was tired and resigned.

“You did well by our country today,” Coach Park said. The gold medal hanging around Seung-Gil’s neck seemed to increase in weight at her words even though it was only plastic. She hadn’t reminded him of his duty to South Korea for months now, but there was nothing else for her to say that would not touch on the topic of powered persons.

“I was absolutely blown away by your free skate today,” Sara told him later when they passed each other in the hotel hallway by coincidence. The gold medal underneath her jacket caught his eye. “Thank you,” Seung-Gil said. “And congratulations on winning.” He hadn’t paid much attention to the other disciplines, which was unusual for him. He supposed that he had been too distracted by the problems in his own field. He had used to reserve that kind of tunnel vision for the red strings only.

His hotel room felt like a refuge. He sat down on his bed, took his phone out of his jacket, and considered the suppressor on his wrist. The three green dots glowed ominously. With that one piece of technology, Seung-Gil had built himself a prison. He had cut out a part of himself in order to feel normal. The red strings had felt like a prison of their own, but he knew better now. Slowly, he pulled the white band off, watching the dots on its face turn from green to red. He stood up, drew the hotel curtains aside, and stepped out on the balcony.

The red strings greeted him. He followed their paths into the heart of the city and reaching up towards the stars. He was all right with not being able to see them. The red strings were closer and promised actual human connections. Even if he got on a spaceship at that very moment and traveled in space for the rest of his life, he would never reach the stars, and there would not be a soulmate for him on the other side.

“One Day I’ll Fly Away” was playing quietly in the background. If he hadn’t been looking at the red strings, it would have made him feel lonely. But he was, and he was enjoying a pleasant Marseille night with a nice soundtrack to listen to. Tomorrow he would skate his new exhibition. Whatever the reception he received, it was a routine he could and would be proud of. After that, there would be more competitions. The national championships, Four Continents, and Worlds. With the return of the Russian and Japanese teams, all the disciplines and podiums would change. But beyond the competitions, there was the promise of getting to know JJ as his soulmate. Even though he felt the weight of the world pulling him down, Seung-Gil allowed himself to smile.

The next day he could not force himself to make any semblance of a smile, despite the cheery congratulations from his fellow skaters and the loud music blaring from the speakers. Nervousness made his arms feel like lead and his skates sound like he was marching towards death.

“It’s just an exhibition skate,” Phichit tried to reassure him. “No one’s going to judge you if you mess up or fall down. Just have fun!”

“It’s not just an exhibition skate to me,” he protested weakly.  _ It’s the third and final statement I’m making at this competition,  _ he wanted to add.

“Don’t put too much pressure on yourself.” Phichit turned Seung-Gil’s shirt neon yellow, which lit up the dark tunnel leading to the ice. “It’ll all be fine!” When that had no effect on his expression, the other skater turned his shirt into a rainbow.

“Stop that. Make my shirt white again,” he demanded, and in a lower voice, “It’s almost your turn to skate. Put on your suppressor again.”

“Okay, mom,” Phichit teased, obliging him. Seung-Gil’s shirt returned to its original pristine white except for the roses embroidered near the wrists. He pulled his suppressor from his pocket and slipped it onto his wrist. “Happy now?”

“Get out of here,” Seung-Gil grumbled. “I hope you fall on every jump.”

“Hey!”

Once Phichit was gone, he was left alone with only his nerves to accompany him. He shook out his limbs, trying to remain loose and limber, and waited for his cue. When it was time, he headed onto the ice but stayed by the boards near the announcer. There was something off about the rink, though. The audience was quieter than usual, but that wasn’t it. He looked down at the ice and just managed to catch the announcer picking up something by the boards. It looked vaguely familiar. No, very familiar. He squinted at the object -objects- and confirmed that they were suppressors. He knew the Chinese pairs team that had skated before him was powered, but they had definitely gone out on the ice with their suppressors. Had they decided to take them off as part of their exhibition?  
“And now, ladies and gentlemen, I present to you the men’s champion, Seung-Gil Lee!”

He reflexively swept open his arms to encourage applause. In the back of his mind, he tried to figure out why the Chinese pairs team had left their suppressors on the ice. Had it been deliberate, or had it been impromptu, spur of the moment like his own exhibition skate?

_ This is not the time to get distracted, _ he scolded himself.  _ Focus on what you’re doing instead of what others are doing for once.  _ The first strains of the now-familiar “One Day I’ll Fly Away” reached his ears, and he launched into the choreography he had been practicing late at night in his hotel room for the past few days. It flowed naturally from him like he had been practicing it for weeks rather than hours. He hoped the audience could understand his message.  _ They’re keeping me in a cage! _ his blades screamed as they cut through the ice.  _ Let me go! _

“When will love be through with me?” Nicole Kidman sang desperately for the final time. Seung-Gil slid onto his knees, face pressed almost into the ice, and remained there as the final notes played.  _ When will they be through with me _ ? he wondered as he stood up, waved to the crowd, and skated off the ice.  _ When will they be through with us? _

That was new,” Sara said to him when he joined the skaters who had finished their exhibitions. The only performers left were the ice dance champions. “Are you using that for the rest of the year?”

“I don’t know,” he answered truthfully. “It was a very spontaneous decision. I prepared it here in Marseille.”

“Really?” Sara gaped at him. “So you only got, what, one ice session to practice it?”

“Yes.”  
“It looks pretty good. It’s pretty pointed, too.”

“That’s why I might not use it again,” he admitted. “I’m not sure I have the courage to skate to it again.”

Sara hummed thoughtfully. “Well, think about it. None of us have exhibitions that express what yours does. Otabek’s expresses anger, mine and Michele’s are calls to action, and the Chinese pairs team that skated before you was all about defiance, but yours is the flip side of the coin. It’s about the desperation and loneliness of having to compete with a hostile governing body but forcing yourself to do it anyways. No one else is skating something like that.”

She had understood the point of his exhibition entirely, and that made the open wound that was his feelings about skating sting a little less. So when Seung-Gil responded, “I will definitely think about it,” he meant it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Jun Hwan Cha’s EX for the 2016 GPF was set to “One Day I’ll Fly Away”.  
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cSKVuhbCyhU
> 
> Inspired by Yuna Kim’s starting pose for her version of “Tango de Roxanne”:   
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vh-850kqJoE 
> 
> The 2016 GPF pairs champions are Evgenia Tarasova and Vladimir Morozov from Russia, but since in this fic Russia ditched the GP series, I defaulted to the silver medalists, Yu Xiaoyu and Zhang Hao of China.
> 
> That’s the end of this work! I have a couple of chapters back when I was writing a sequel, but I never finished it. And… honestly, I don’t plan to finish the sequel.
> 
> Someone made fanart for this fic, but I never got to see it :( If you want to communicate with me, my personal tumblr is beatbobblyflay; my twitter handle is pchantasia. 
> 
> Thanks to everyone for reading! I'm incredibly grateful that everyone put up with me.

**Author's Note:**

> -Fic and chapter titles are from the Augenbraum translation of the Filipino national novel Noli Me Tangere, which I was reading at the same time I was writing this fic.  
> -Fic title comes from: "I thought I could see you in the heart of the forest, like a vague, loving shadow, shimmering among the light and the darkness of the thicket."  
> 


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